Christian Horner spills on crunch meeting after a difficult F1 Belgian GP outing for Sergio Perez, who didn’t wish to talk of his future.
Having had a sound race in Hungary, Red Bull’s Perez put in a good show on Saturday with a front-row start in F1 Belgian GP at a wet Spa-Francorchamps. It was looking all good with a minimum expectation of a podium finish considering the rivals around.
But it all went in the drain on Sunday when Perez started to lose ground. So much so, that he ended up eighth on the line – last among the Top 8 drivers. He was promoted to seventh due to George Russell’s disqualification, but the disappointment remained.
Perez was clueless, as was team boss Horner. “It was a very disappointing race,” said the Mexican to media. “I will say I was just struggling a lot on the straights. I don’t know what was going on. But had to save battery early on in the first couple of laps, and it was just very weak on the straights.
“Once I managed to clear it, charge it back a bit, I was pretty much the same as Lewis and Charles. I was staying there. But then the second stint, jumping onto the medium tyre with all the traffic behind, it just made it really, really difficult. Very tricky. We did quite a shorter stint as well. We were just out of sync, I think.
“We were just not good with tyres. Balance wasn’t there as well. Plenty of things to analyse on our side. We were obviously very compromised by having just two sets of mediums. So, again, I think strategically it wasn’t a perfect exhibition. It’s something that we will get together as a team,” summed up Perez.
Horner added: “Starting on the front row, objective really was pre-race, we felt that third and fifth would be achievable. We achieved the fifth, but we didn’t achieve the third. So we obviously need to go through the data understand where his loss of pace was? Based on his starting position, we didn’t envisage finishing eighth from second on the grid.”
The results only grew speculation about Perez being replaced in the summer break and videos surfaced of Horner speaking with Daniel Ricciardo and Visa Cash App RB boss Laurent Mekies in the motorhome after the grand prix.
It was not clear what the discussions were but it was natural disappointment from all quarters. Considering the position that Red Bull are in especially with the growing challenge from Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari, they do need to focus on car rather than driver.
Horner elaborated on the disappointment over Perez and his form especially after the start he had. His partnership with Max Verstappen has been sound, but that alone can’t be the saving grace as he will need to step up to on the podium regularly.
Red Bull never wants to change mid-season, but circumstances are such that they could be forced to as Horner noted. Perez, though, doesn’t wish to talk about his future anymore as he clarified. The Monday meeting at Milton Keynes will more less decide his fate.
There is also a filming day at Imola involving Ricciardo, Yuki Tsunoda, Liam Lawson and even Ayumu Iwasa, where the new and old car will be driven. It is not as a job interview but it will be kind of that where the Australian will be looked at the most.
No more future talk –
Perez: “Correct, yesterday I had a good qualifying, a good day. It doesn’t change anything. I think we have too much going on in the team — a lot of things that we have to focus on, and we cannot waste any energy with all this speculation around it. So this is the last time I will speak about the future. To make it clear for everyone, I will not be speaking anymore. I will not answer any more questions on the future.”
Perez’s situation, meeting –
Horner: “I think Checo’s had a tough run over the last few races. And what’s so confusing for us is the season started so well for him, and then tailed off. He did a super job in qualifying yesterday, obviously, we need to go through and understand the issues in the in the race. So we got the time to do that and analyse that and work with him. We’re constantly analysing, we’re constantly looking at things. Yeah, we’ve got a meeting tomorrow, but it’s not just about Checo. It’s going to have other topics on the agenda as well, which we always do going into the summer break. So for us, extending the lead going into summer break for Max will give him a better a better rest. I think for us, the focus is on the constructors’ that we’ve seen another seven or eight points taken off us again. We need to start, we need to turn that around coming out of the break in Zandvoort.”
What to consider, partnership –
Horner: “You take so many things into consideration, it has been a great partnership between the two. Checo is a great team player, and he’s a massive team player. And that’s why he was selected. That’s why we took him at the end of 2020 to put alongside Max and he’s won six, seven races for us. Second in the World Championship last year, goodness knows how many podiums, has been the most successful combination we’ve ever had as a as a driver pairing. And then what’s frustrating for everybody is Checo struggling because nobody wants to see him struggle. Everybody wants to see him succeed. The team has been and is right behind him. Everybody wants to see him, succeed, because it hurts seeing him in the situation that he is.”
Mid-season swap –
Horner: “Nobody wants to make that decision I mean, obviously you guys talk about it every day. But in the team, we want to get him going. We want to give him a car…we see glimpses of race pace as we saw in Hungary, it was strong. He had fourth best race pace in Budapest, but he had a difficult Saturday with a crash in qualifying. He did a good job in Spa on Saturday, I mean to be 500 hundreds of Charles in scrubbed set of tyres and put it on the front row, it was a tremendous effort, and today his race just failed. I think that, he’s acutely aware that we need both cars performing and which is what we had at the beginning of the year. And that’s where we need to get back to.”
Ricciardo, filming –
Horner: “It’s a filming day so they’ll be filming. It’s all about content. It is in a car because you can do 200 kilometers in the car so they will be both be doing plenty of filming. He’s [Ricciardo] done alright If you… I haven’t looked at the race plot, I only saw the end result, that he was 11th [10th] and starting on the soft tyre he’s obviously doing a good race. Look, we’re in a great position where we’ve got all the info and the priority is to support Checo and to understand what he needs. We all want him to turn it around, we all want to see him deliver.”
Tough on Perez, filming day –
Ricciardo: “Yep. Well I get it. It can all be a bit tiring. But I’ve been there. Yeah, it’s not always fun. Job, yes, 35, job interview. Yeah, we’ll see. I mean, I do, we always plan into a filming day. I might do a few extra laps. Will it have add some weight or not let’s see. But I guess my approach is every time I’m going to get strapped in I’ll try and do the best I can. So I won’t be in holiday mode just yet and then we’ll see. I don’t know honestly because last year when I drove the Red Bull the current car after Silverstone, that was let’s say pretty legit. I was driving the current car and I knew if I could do something special maybe then the call comes.
“So I would say that definitely felt a little bit more real. So yeah that’s probably the best way I can answer it. So I’m not gonna say no this doesn’t but that one I was very aware that this could be something real here. This one is maybe a little bit more, not sure about. So I know Iwasa and Liam are and I think I’m going to turn probably a few hours from now. So if it is, then it will be that one. But then with the filming days, we’ll be in the current car. So that’s like 100km range, so Yuki and I will do it on the next run.”
Here’s Red Bull trio on critical Belgian GP weekend
Here’s how F1 Belgian GP panned out
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