09/10/2023
NEWS STORY
Horner sends clear warning to Perez
Red Bull boss admits that the Austrian team "desperately" needs Sergio Perez to rediscover his form as Mexican suffers another nightmare afternoon.
Never a master of single lap pace, once again Perez made his Sunday afternoon that little bit harder after crashing out of Saturday's Sprint and subsequently having to start the Qatar Grand Prix from the pitlane after the team rebuilt his car.
While his teammate cruised to victory, hours after wrapping up his third title, Perez finished tenth having picked up numerous penalties for track limits violations.
The poor performance of Qatar comes weeks after the embarrassment of Suzuka, and with a 209 point difference between the pair, it is understandable that frustration is growing.
Despite the titles with Sebastian Vettel and now Verstappen, the Austrian team has never secured a 1-2 in the championship, and despite Sunday's first lap off Lewis Hamilton is closing in on the Mexican, with a number of other drivers not far behind.
"I think we really need to sit down with Checo because we know what he's capable of and he's not hitting that form at the moment," said Christian Horner. "We desperately need him to find that form to keep this second place in the championship.
"It was frustrating that he's only come out of the weekend with one point," he added, "and I think he could have, even starting from the back of the grid, there was an opportunity to score heavily today or decently.
"But we'll support him as much as we can because there's the triple header coming up. There's a huge amount of points with sprint races as well.
"I think you just need to sometimes sort of take your foot off, put it on the floor, stop the merry-go-round and just go back to basics. And that's what we'll do," said the Briton.
"We all know what Checo is capable of and we want to support him to get back into a position where even as near ago as Monza, he was finishing in second place to Max.
"The most important thing for us is winning both championships," he continued. "We've done that. Then, what's the next best thing after that would be to have both your drivers first and second.
"You can see Mercedes have a pair, McLaren have a pair, Ferrari have a pair that are quite tight between the respective drivers. I think we've had that at the earlier point in the year. But as the season has gone on it's become more variant. We just need to get Checo back to the best form that he's capable of.
"Last year and this year, he's contributed significantly to the constructors' championship," he admitted. "We desperately want him to find that form and as a team, we need him to.
"We can't afford to have a big split because if, as you would expect, the grid continues to concertina next year, we need both drivers delivering at the top of the game."
In all honesty it will require a massive turnaround from the Mexican however it would appear that his head is already dropping.
A number of drivers have been linked with his seat, even though they know they would play "wing man" to Verstappen, with Alex Albon surely deserving of another shot.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Lusail here.