Sergio Perez’s seat at Crimson Bull may very well be beneath risk within the remaining 4 rounds of the season following what workforce principal Christian Horner described as a “horrible weekend” on the Mexico Metropolis Grand Prix.
Horner gave Perez the goal of scoring factors and beating Oscar Piastri in Sunday’s race after the Mexican dropped out in Q1 – together with the McLaren driver – throughout a disappointing Saturday. A robust begin from Perez was negated by his being out of place on the grid, which earned him a time penalty, and after he made contact with Liam Lawson his race unraveled to ultimately end seventeenth.
“Checo once more has had a horrible weekend,” Horner stated. “Nothing has gone proper for him this weekend. He is aware of Formulation 1 is a results-based enterprise and inevitably if you end up not delivering, the highlight is firmly on you.
“When anybody is underperforming, in fact there’s all the time going to be scrutiny on that. As a workforce we have to have each vehicles scoring factors. That’s the nature of Formulation 1.
“It’s fixed. It’s all the time there. From the workforce’s perspective we’re working with him as laborious as we are able to to try to assist him, we’ve performed all the things that we are able to and we’ll proceed to take action in Brazil subsequent weekend, however there comes a cut-off date which you can solely achieve this a lot.”
Pushed on whether or not Perez will see out the season, Horner refused to verify his place past the subsequent race in Interlagos.
“That scrutiny is all the time going to be there,” he stated. “There comes a cut-off date that tough selections must be made. We’re now third within the constructor’s championship. Our willpower is to try to get again right into a profitable place, however it’s going to be a tall order over these subsequent 4 races.”
Horner did acknowledge that the contact with Lawson had led to vital harm that restricted Perez’s possibilities of getting again into the highest 10 regardless of his earlier penalty.
“Sadly he began out of field place, so he picked up a penalty for that,” he stated. “His first lap was sturdy. His begin was sturdy. After which the harm he picked up with Liam, he picked up about 70 factors price of load with a gap within the sidepod and half the aspect of the ground lacking (most important picture). So at that time, you’re successfully wounded and scoring factors was by no means going to be on the playing cards.
“Initially I feel it demonstrates that the 2 groups do race one another, and while having the identical possession are unbiased in the best way that they go racing. Liam has apologized, I feel, to Checo for the incident. Clearly they’ll be classes that come out of that, however irritating actually for Checo’s race to select up the harm and lose useful factors.”
