Sergio Perez’s seat at Red Bull could be under threat in the remaining four rounds of the season following what team principal Christian Horner described as a “horrible weekend” at the Mexico City Grand Prix.
Horner gave Perez the target of scoring points and beating Oscar Piastri in Sunday’s race after the Mexican dropped out in Q1 – along with the McLaren driver – during a disappointing Saturday. A strong start from Perez was negated by his being out of position on the grid, which earned him a time penalty, and after he made contact with Liam Lawson his race unraveled to eventually finish 17th.
“Checo again has had a horrible weekend,” Horner said. “Nothing has gone right for him this weekend. He knows Formula 1 is a results-based business and inevitably when you are not delivering, the spotlight is firmly on you.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1388]
“When anyone is underperforming, of course there is always going to be scrutiny on that. As a team we need to have both cars scoring points. That is the nature of Formula 1.
“It’s constant. It’s always there. From the team’s perspective we are working with him as hard as we can to try and support him, we’ve done everything that we can and we’ll continue to do so in Brazil next weekend, but there comes a point in time that you can only do so much.”
Pushed on whether Perez will see out the season, Horner refused to confirm his place beyond the next race in Interlagos.
“That scrutiny is always going to be there,” he said. “There comes a point in time that difficult decisions have to be made. We’re now third in the constructor’s championship. Our determination is to try and get back into a winning position, but it’s going to be a tall order over these next four races.”
Horner did acknowledge that the contact with Lawson had led to significant damage that limited Perez’s chances of getting back into the top 10 despite his earlier penalty.
“Unfortunately he started out of box position, so he picked up a penalty for that,” he said. “His first lap was strong. His start was strong. And then the damage he picked up with Liam, he picked up about 70 points worth of load with a hole in the sidepod and half the side of the floor missing (main image). So at that point, you’re effectively wounded and scoring points was never going to be on the cards.
“First of all I think it demonstrates that the two teams do race each other, and whilst having the same ownership are independent in the way that they go racing. Liam has apologized, I think, to Checo for the incident. Obviously they’ll be lessons that come out of that, but frustrating certainly for Checo’s race to pick up the damage and lose valuable points.”