26/05/2021
NEWS STORY
Christian Horner admits that Sergio Perez continues to struggle on Saturdays, which subsequently compromises his races.
As has been pretty much a constant during his F1 career, in failing to maximise his efforts on Saturday afternoons, Sergio Perez makes things that much harder for himself the following day.
Last weekend he qualified 9th to teammate, Max Verstappen's second, while in Bahrain he lined up eleventh and in Spain eighth.
Granted, he was on the front row at Imola, but generally he is not qualifying where he needs to.
"I think he's finding Saturdays harder than Sundays," admits Christian Horner. "His race pace has generally been very, very strong. I think Saturdays are still…
"We need to work with him," he continues, "to help him, to get comfortable. That will come.
"You can see that the majority of drivers, probably with the exception of Carlos, that have changed teams for this year, it's taken them a while to get up to speed.
"I think the tyres are more tricky as well this year, which throws in another dynamic.
"He's getting there and a performance like (Monaco) only helps that."
"We managed to minimise the damage from Saturday," said the Mexican following Sunday's race in which he finished fourth.
Asked if he was getting to grips with the RB16B, he replied: "On Sunday yes... on Saturday I'm still needing the time.
"This weekend particularly I think we took a wrong direction, we didn't read the car as good as Max, but hopefully in the coming races we can do another step.
"We have to work on Saturdays, try to find a better direction on the car and we're going to be very competitive," he insisted. "We've got a lot of work ahead of us but I think once I'm comfortable with the car, we're going to see very big steps and a lot of points for the team."