Sergio Perez has taken responsibility for his Q2 exit in qualifying for the ღseason-opening Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix.

After having his first lap in Q2 deleted for exceeding track limits at Turn 4, Red Bull sent Perez ꦫout again on🐎 another set of medium tyres, rather than softs, in a bid to make it into Q3.

The Mexican could only manage 11th come the close of🧸 the session, 0.3s down on Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen in Q2.

Reflecting on the call not to run on soft tyres in Q2, Perez felt he had en🉐ough pace in hand to progress on the harder rubber.

“No, I was really confident that I had the pace in hand,” Perez said. “Just putting th🐬e lap together would’ve put me through but I didn’t put it together. I think it was the right call from 🌌the time, to try go through on the medium but I just didn’t put the lap together.”

As Perez struggled, teammate🥃 Verstappen stormed to pole position in Bahrඣain ahead of the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

The Mexican remains unperturbed by his Q2 ex♑it and is confident he will be able to make gains in the coming races once he gets more c༺omfortable with the Red Bull RB16B.

“It's been a difficult weekend overall, getting up to speed with the change of winds💃 and even, it’s a one-lap tyre around here, you can’t really do more than one lap. It’s been a bit tricky to get up to speed, but I think we made good progress throughout qualifying.

“We had a little issue in the car in P3 that put us off a bit going into qualifying. But every kilometreꦿ that I’m doing with the car is helping me a lot. I’m happy with the progress I did with the car’s understanding going unto qualifying.

“It just needs to come more. I just have to be patient with myself, put the work on and it should just bဣe a matter of time, I’m not concerned at all.”