Perez fears "painful day in the championship" for 'stressed' Racing Point

Sergio Perez is predicting the Eifel Grand Prix could prove costly for Racing Point following a tough day at the Nürburgring for the team.

Racing Point was initially forced into an emergency call-up of Nico Hülkenberg after Lance Stroll was taken ill ahead of the final practice session.

With no track time behind him, Hülkenberg will start last after missing out on a place in Q2 by half a second, while Perez will line up ninth.

With direct rivals for third place in the constructors' championship in McLaren and Renault performing well, and even Ferrari's Charles Leclerc qualifying fourth, Perez fears the worst.

“It all changed very quickly with Lance not coming in this morning," said Perez. "I could see some stress in the team.

"I didn’t really know what was happening, I hope health-wise Lance is okay and we can have him back soon.

"For Nico as well it was tough to jump straight into qualifying, so it isn’t looking great for tomorrow, having both Renaults there, the Ferrari, it can be a painful day in the championship tomorrow.”

Perez, believing "we definitely should be higher up", also bemoaned the team's qualifying strategy which left him with only one set of soft tyres for Q3.

"I think we messed up a bit with our strategy," added Perez."We tried to qualify [in Q1] with the medium which meant that we were so far behind that we had to go with the soft.

"I only had one set of softs in Q3, and I think the track changed quite a bit in that final run. With the wind it was pretty hard. It just made things a lot harder.

"We were expecting a bit more graining. We were trying to go through on the mediums but we were obviously too slow today."

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