Sergio Perez said his Belgian Grand Prix was “really bad” after falling from second on the grid to eighth at the finish.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said “you never want to go backwards” and reiterated his concerns over Perez’s poor points-scoring, which has prompted speculation over his future at the team in recent weeks.
“It was a really bad race for us,” Perez told the official F1 channel. “It started well on the first stint, but then the second stint was really complicated with going onto the medium compound. That really hurt a lot when I had to push, the degradation was just quite high.
“We had to do quite a short stint, unfortunately, and that compromised, I think, the race time. But ultimately we didn’t have the pace today.”
Perez’s team mate Max Verstappen, who was relegated to 11th on the grid after exceeding his maximum number of power unit components, gained six places from start to finish, the same number Perez lost.
Horner had mixed feelings about the performance of his two drivers after the race.
“I thought Max drove a good race from 11th to fifth, finishing ahead of his nearest championship rival so extending his lead there,” he said. “For Checo, obviously second to eighth, but with the fastest lap. We need to have a good look at that.”
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Perez’s poor result came off the back of a strong recovery drive at the previous race in Hungary and his best qualifying result for 10 rounds this weekend.
“We need to go through it all and have a good look, but obviously, we didn’t want to go from second to eighth, as I’m sure, Lando didn’t want to go from fourth to sixth,” said Horner. “You never want to go backwards.”
Amid rumours Red Bull will hold a meeting during the summer break to consider a potential replacement for Perez, Horner insisted: “Today won’t impact anything.
“With Checo, obviously we need both cars scoring. We can see McLaren have taken, I think, another seven or eight points out of us today in the constructors’ and we need to stop that. We’ve got to bounce back after the summer break.
“So we need Checo up there. Yesterday he was great in qualifying – unfortunately today hasn’t quite worked out.”
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2024 Belgian Grand Prix
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