30/05/2023
NEWS STORY
As was pretty much expected, Helmut Marko has hit out following Sergio Perez's miserable Monaco weekend.
The Mexican described it as the "worst weekend" he could remember, having gone from hero to zero on the unforgiving streets of the Principality.
A year ago he was lauded following his drive to victory, but twelve months down the line it was criticism all the way.
Crashing out in Q1, Sunday was never going to be easy, but putting himself even further into the team's bad books was the fact that in removing the car from the track the marshals gave the waiting world a priceless view of the RB19's underside.
Rather than making amends on Sunday, Perez was involved in numerous collisions necessitating no less than five pits stops, finally crossing the line two laps down on his teammate.
It seems only yesterday that the Mexican was talking up his title chances, but judging by the reaction maybe he should start worrying about his job prospects.
Asked about Sunday's race, a still angry Marko told Red Bull's own ServusTV that the damage was done on Saturday.
"It didn't matter then," he said, "everything went wrong there", adding that the qualifying crash was "not irresponsible, but unreasonable".
On Sunday he told Sky Germany: "I hope that today's mistakes are enough for the rest of the season.
"In general, his speed when he drove free was good," he added. "But his crash in qualifying ruined the weekend.
Meanwhile, in another seeming reversal of fortune, Marko was full of praise for young Nyck de Vries, who only a couple of weeks ago appeared to be in the Austrian's line of fire.
This was by far his best weekend for AlphaTauri," said the Austrian, according to Motorsport.com. "Nyck was much closer to Yuki than before. This is what I want to see from him.
"We want to see more," he added. "We thought we'd bring in someone with some experience already to challenge Yuki. But that didn't happen yet, so that is the most important thing."
Asked about rumours of a Barcelona deadline for de Vries to raise his game, Marko said: There is never a deadline. We just watch it and look at the performances.
"When we have to act, then we will act," he warned. "At the moment we don't do anything."