16/06/2023
NEWS STORY
Sergio Perez admits to being left confused by Christian Horner's claim that the Mexican's loss of form in Monaco and Spain eases the pressure on him.
In the midst of the Monaco mayhem, having crashed out in qualifying, Perez finished a distant 16th, two laps down on his teammate. In Spain a mistake in qualifying meant he failed to make it out of Q2, though a strong drive the following day saw him finish fifth.
Nonetheless, with his teammate winning both the back-to-back races this left the Mexican 53 points adrift, at which point Horner opined that this eased the pressure on him.
"If you look at the points now there's a big split between the two of them," said the Red Bull boss. "If anything, that should take the pressure off him," he added.
"He has nothing to lose now and just needs to relax. He can breathe out and just drive like we know he's capable of, like he did in Azerbaijan and some of the early races this year."
Not so, insists the Mexican.
"Basically, I want a restart, go again," he told reporters in Montreal.
"Monaco was all down to me," he continued, "I had a really bad mistake, but then in Barcelona in the qualifying again it was tricky with the damp conditions and we didn't manage to have a good qualifying and then we paid the price on Sunday.
"I'm looking forward to getting back on the form we had in the early season."
Asked about Horner's comment and whether he agreed that there is now less pressure, Perez replied: "I don't think so...
"We always have to deliver to our maximum," he continued. "We just have to make sure we deliver. We have a great car and we should be having a lot of podiums, wins and so on from now until the end of the year."
"I cannot afford to have any bad weekends any more," he said. "I think I've had two or three bad weekends in the season so I really have to get rid of those and keep the consistency high because I think it's something that Max has been really good and consistent throughout this period."