Force India takes blame for Perez's bungled Hungarian GP pitstop

Perez finished 11th at the Hungaroring but had been running ahead of team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, who wound up 10th, when he entered pitlane on lap 40 to find the team did not have tyres ready.

Deputy team principal Bob Fernley explained that no message had been passed to the pitcrew after the decision to pit was made.

"It was a miscommunication on the pitwall," he told Autosport.

"It was our fault, nothing to do with him. We made a mistake.

"We missed a call on the pitwall picking it up in the procedures."

Perez told Autosport his race had been "running to plan" until that point, even though the VJM09 lacked downforce load in Hungary.

"The first stint was very strong; we were on plan to complete it and then we went on to mediums," he said.

"But they were sliding around and I couldn't manage it well to make them work, so we decided we had a nice window to stop.

"They called me in, but when I stopped there were no tyres so we lost a lot of time.

"It's annoying, but it can happen sometimes. We've seen it in the past.

"Probably more than ninth place was available for us, but it's how it is sometimes."

Following a strong recent run in which it closed on fourth-placed Williams in the constructors' championship, Force India's poor performance in Hungary was a setback, although Fernley could at least draw a positive.

"From lap one, 10th was probably the best we could do, and 10th was the best we got," he said.

"It probably deserved to go to Nico, but could have gone to [Perez], so nothing lost.

"It wasn't an inspiring weekend; I don't think we qualified as well as we could, and as a result of that we couldn't race as well as I'd have liked to have done.

"But when you have a bad weekend and you only lose one point to the people you're looking at trying to compete with [Williams] then it's not so bad."

Fernley believes this weekend's final race before the summer break in Germany is an opportunity to atone.

"We were optimistic for Hungary, and I think our pace over the weekend was good," he said.

"We're still aiming for that best of the rest position each time, but other teams did better than we did and we've got to rectify that in Germany."