20/07/2024
NEWS STORY
Christian Horner has revealed that in a bid to help Sergio Perez rediscover his mojo he had a heart-to-heart with him in his kitchen.
While the F1 world mulls the future of Adrian Newey, Carlos Sainz and who might fill the second berth at Mercedes, for the likes of Sergio Perez there may not be a future.
Helmut Marko has already admitted that his patience is running out, and in a week the Austrian - forever referred to on this site as Red Bull's Lord High Executioner - talked of "stagnant" drivers holding up the driver market, particularly in terms of upcoming youngsters, the clock is clearly ticking.
Of course, we've been here before with Perez, whose moments of brilliant are all too ofter interspersed with long sequences of lacklustre performances on both Saturday afternoon and Sunday.
This year has been no exception, for after a strong start to the season his last podium was in China, since when he has scored just 33 points, failing to finish in Monaco and Canada and failing to make it out of Q1 in three of the last five qualifying sessions.
"We have a really open relationship," Christian Horner told Sky Sports, when asked about the situation, "and I sat down with him in the kitchen of my house and said, 'Come on, what's going on? Is there something else?'
"And he was like, 'No, I think I'm just overthinking things a bit too much'.
"I think almost ignoring what's going on on the other side of the garage will do him a favour, which is the approach that he's taking now, just focusing on his own performance."
"We have some feedback. We try to help him," added technical director Pierre Wache. "Sometimes he's unlucky, you know, it's what happened in some qualifying that could affect the overall result of the race.
"We are trying to help him to have a better result for the next races before shutdown."
Check out our Friday gallery from the Hungaroring here.