Christian Horner has confirmed Pink Bull will maintain talks over Sergio Perez’s future on Monday after the staff’s motorsport advisor Helmut Marko stated the Mexican driver “completely collapsed” in Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix.
Perez got here into the ultimate race earlier than Formulation 1’s summer time break beneath heavy stress to ship a powerful outcome having scored simply 21 factors throughout the earlier seven rounds.
An improved qualifying show earned him second on the grid, however Perez fell backwards within the race to complete eighth (later promoted to seventh attributable to George Russell’s disqualification), three locations behind his team-mate Max Verstappen, who had began eleventh after serving a grid penalty.
Marko advised Sky Germany: “Sergio had the opportunity to take a good result from second place. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Especially in the last stint, he completely collapsed.
“What appeared so optimistic in qualifying sadly did not materialise within the race.”
Each Horner and Marko confirmed that Pink Bull will maintain a gathering on Monday, earlier than the staff shuts down for F1’s summer time break later within the week, throughout which Perez’s future will probably be on the agenda.
“Things are always constantly analysed,” Horner stated. “We have a meeting on Monday but it’s not just about Checo. There are other topics on the agenda as well, which we always do before the summer break.”
There was hypothesis over latest weeks that Perez might be changed by both Pink Bull reserve driver Liam Lawson, or one of many drivers at their junior squad RB, Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda.
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Ted Kravitz is within the paddock as he opinions all the largest tales, together with race winner George Russell’s automotive investigation from the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix.
Dropping Perez mid-season can be embarrassing for Pink Bull having singed him to a two-year contract extension lower than two months earlier, however his poor kind has enabled McLaren to shut the hole on the high of the Constructors’ Championship to only 42 factors.
Referring to Monday’s assembly, Marko added: “For us, the situation is such that we will also go through the overall situation for 2025. We have a number of drivers and we have a concept.
“However in fact each result’s [important] for Sergio, and eighth place from second on the grid is definitely not what we anticipated.”
Horner: It hurts us seeing Perez struggle
Horner has offered public support for Perez throughout his poor run of form and said that it has “harm” him personally to witness his driver’s struggles.
“Nobody needs to see Checo struggling, everybody needs to see him succeed,” he said. “The staff have been, and is, proper behind him. It hurts seeing him within the state of affairs he’s.
“Checo’s had a tricky run over the previous few races. What’s so complicated for us is the season began so nicely for him. He did a brilliant job in qualifying.
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Christian Horner solutions a ‘brutally arduous’ query regarding Sergio Perez’s prolonged contract with Pink Bull following the Mexican’s drop in kind in latest races.
“We need to go through and understand the issues in the race and we have got time to do that.”
Horner implied that Perez might be given extra time to show his marketing campaign round, however Pink Bull have a status for making ruthless choices over their driver line-ups.
“Nobody wants to make that decision,” he added. “You guys talk about it every day. In the team, we want to get him going and understand.
“He is as acutely conscious as anyone we’d like each vehicles performing, which is what we had firstly of the yr and that is what we have to get again to.”
Perez wants to improve ‘understanding’ during break
Perez’s hopes of a strong race were dented at the start as he lost a place to Lewis Hamilton, but he steadied himself to deliver a strong first stint before fading on his second set of tyres.
“We misplaced a place to Lewis however the first stint was going nicely,” he told Sky Sports F1. “I used to be holding again Piastri, we have been working third. However then going onto the medium, pitting into site visitors, we misplaced the place to Piastri. We have been actually sluggish in a straight line, one thing that we have to perceive.
“We were just too aggressive on that tyre on that second stint, ended up doing only 10 laps and that compromised the whole race because I ended up doing a massively long stint on the hard, and generally speaking we were just weak on tyres.”
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Sergio Perez is out of qualifying in Q1 after the Pink Bull driver slammed straight into the obstacles on the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Perez has expressed confidence that he will not get replaced earlier than the top of the season, and appeared to stay assured that may be the case as he acknowledged his wishes for the summer time break.
He stated: “To really focus, together with the team, to understand what we’ve been doing with the car the last couple of events.
“The place we ended up right now, I believe it is a actually good race to know what we have been doing with the tyres. And go from there.
“I think that’s the main thing and that’s we have to do as a team.”
Formulation 1 returns after the summer time break with the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort on August 23-25, stay on Sky Sports activities F1. Stream each F1 race and extra with a NOW Sports activities Month Membership – No contract, cancel anytime
