Christian Horner concurs with the statement from Helmut Marko as he feels the chances of Sergio Perez to win the title is slim.
Ahead of the F1 Belgian GP, Red Bull advisor Marko came up with a strong statement with regards to Perez’s chances to win the 2023 title against teammate Max Verstappen. He noted that the Mexican has woken up from a dream to win the championship.
“He has now woken up from his World Championship dream,” said Marko. “Maybe that will help him to focus again on delivering the best possible performance.” Ever since the start of the 2023 season, Perez has insisted on taking on Verstappen.
He started off well but his performances started to dip especially in qualifying where he did not make it in Q3 for five races in a row. He always had to come through the field which created a big gap to Verstappen in the drivers’ standings.
In fact, it pushed him towards the other drivers behind him but better results in last few races has helped him regain the advantage. “I think he’ll have taken a lot more confidence out of Spa,” said Horner. “He put it on the front row.
“He led the grand prix, finished second, he’s a clear second in the drivers world championship, so I think he’ll take some confidence out of it,” summed up Horner, who kind of agreed with Marko and conceded that Perez is in the situation where second is best.
“We all know that Helmut is fairly straightforward in some of his analysis,” continued Horner. “But I think that Checo knows that barring a disaster for Max that this championship is out of reach. So it’s about him maximising his own performance, not losing ground to any of the drivers behind and trying to pick up a few wins between now and the end of the year.”
Here’s Max Verstappen, Christian Horner on race engineer
Here’s Sergio Perez and Christian Horner on their bet
Here’s Sergio Perez on struggles with medium tyre
Here’s Max Verstappen on his Belgian GP