Red Bull team principal Christian Horner defended his decision to keep Sergio Perez in their driver line-up after his run of poor results in recent races.
Horner admitted Zandvoort, scene of this weekend’s race, tends to be one of Perez’s poorer venues, but said he expects better things from him in subsequent rounds.
Following the British Grand Prix, Horner described Perez’s failure to score points as “unsustainable”. After Perez scored seventh-place finishes in the following two rounds, Horner confirmed to Red Bull staff the 34-year-old racer will remain at the team.
Speaking at Zandvoort today Horner said Red Bull remain confident Perez can recapture the form he showed at the beginning of the year. “We know what Checo is capable of,” he told Sky. “We know that at the beginning of the year he was scoring well, four podiums in five races.
“I think he’s just had a lack of confidence and has ended up in a bit of a spiral. He’s had a bit of a reset, hopefully, over the summer break.
“We know that there’s tracks that he’s won at coming up. We’ve got Azerbaijan where he’s won both sprint race and grand prix on the same weekend. He’s won a fantastic race in Singapore against Charles Leclerc in mixed conditions. He’s been very quick at Monza.
“Zandvoort hasn’t been his best circuit, so of the four races coming up before the next mini-break, I would say this is his most challenging one.”
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Horner denied the team had deliberately avoided taking the unpopular decision to drop Perez before his home race in Mexico later this year. “Absolutely not,” he said, “it’s all about performance.”
Red Bull uniquely runs two Formula 1 teams and could have promoted Yuki Tsunoda or Daniel Ricciardo from its junior squad RB. It also has RB reserve driver Liam Lawson available, but Horner said the team’s analysis of their performance supports the decision to keep Perez.
“We’ve got the best two drivers, we believe, in this car,” he said. “We have all the data from all of the drivers. So we have that information, if we felt that there was something better, we would have changed it by now.
“We believe what we have is capable of defending the championship. It finished first and second in last year’s championship, finished first and third in the year before, and obviously won [the drivers’ championship for Max Verstappen in ’21 as well.
“You’re very quick to…
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