Red Bull surprised the paddock earlier this month when they confirmed that they would retain Sergio Perez for the rest of the season, despite his woeful form. F1 journalists set out in search of answers from the team’s bosses and Sky Sports’ Natalie Pinkham approached Team Principal Christian Horner for the same.
Horner insisted that Red Bull is confident Perez can turn things around. Moreover, he believed that the upcoming races would be at tracks that suit Perez’s strengths.
“I think that we know what Checo’s capable of,” Horner said ahead of the Dutch GP. “We know that at the beginning of the year. You know he was scoring…what, four podiums in five races“.
“We know that there’s tracks that he’s won at coming up,” he added. “We’ve got Azerbaijan, where he’s won both sprint race and Grand Prix on the same weekend. He’s won another fantastic race in Singapore against Charles Leclerc in mixed conditions. He’s been very quick at Monza“.
Pinkham: Is it crucial that you hang on to him to at least the Mexican GP?
Horner: No, no, absolutely not. It’s all about performance. So, you know, for us, we’ve got the two drivers that we believe in our pool of drivers are the most capable of giving us the best results.
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Horner felt Perez would struggle the most at Zandvoort – Max Verstappen’s home Grand Prix – out of the remaining races on the calendar. Like Helmut Marko, he also rubbished rumors of Red Bull not choosing to sack Perez for commercial reasons.
Marko gave a plausible reason behind Perez’s struggles
Verstappen has outperformed Perez every year since the latter moved to Milton-Keynes in 2021. However, his performances were never as bad as they have been in 2024.
The grid has closed up with the likes of McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari making major strides. Red Bull is not the most dominant team anymore, and the team resorted to a different approach which Marko felt could have caused Perez’s slump.
The setup of the RB20 has been made more aggressive, which, according to Marko, has made the car increasingly unpredictable and more difficult to drive for Perez.
Labeling the car as a b*tch, Marko also insisted that Verstappen was the only driver who possessed the skills to tame it.
