Sergio Perez' future at Red Bull is once again in the spotlight, after a poor Belgian Grand Prix saw him drop from second place at the start to P7 at the finish line.
A string of poor weekends for the Mexican driver had raised speculation that he might be dropped from the driver line-up despite having just signed an extension to his contract with Red Bull.
Perez seemed to have finally put that gossip to rest after a good showing on Saturday when he clinched a front row start in Spa after Max Verstappen was sidelined with a ten-place grid penalty for taking a new engine.
But the race didn't go well for Perez and he was immediately overtaken by Lewis Hamilton into La Source. He ended up behind Oscar Piastri following the first round of pit stops, seemingly without the pace to pass the McLaren.
Things didn't get much better from that point on and Perez eventually dropped to eighth place, taking an extra pit stop at the end for a fresh set of softs that allowed him to pick up the bonus point for setting the fastest lap.
“It was a really bad race for us,” Perez admitted to the official F1 channel. “It started well on the first stint, but then the second stint was really complicated with going onto the medium compound.
"It really hurt a lot when I had to push, the degradation was just quite high," he continued. “We had to do quite a short stint unfortunately, and I think that compromised the race time.
"We were just out of sync, I think," Perez said. "Jumping onto the medium tyre with all the traffic behind, it just made it really, really difficult, very tricky. We were just not good with tyres today, balance wasn’t there as well.
“I don’t know why we went so short. I think we were obviously very compromised by having just two sets of mediums.
"I was just struggling a lot in the race. I don’t know what was going on," he said. "We had to save battery early on in the first couple of laps, and it was just very weak on the straights.
"Once I managed to clear it, charge it back a bit, I was pretty much the same as Lewis [Hamilton] and Charles [Leclerc]. I was staying there," he said. "But ultimately, we didn’t have the pace today.
“I think Mercedes’ pace was very impressive. We couldn’t match the Ferraris either," he sighed. "There are plenty of things we need to analyse
"I think it was not a perfect execution," he added. "It’s something that we will get together as a team and obviously understand and learn from it.”
The performance of his team mate suggested the RB20 did have pace, with Verstappen quickly climbing into the top ten from his starting spot in P11 and finishing in fourth (following the decision to exclude George Russell).
That's left team principal Christian Horner needing to look closely at what went wrong for Perez, and why things still don't seem to be getting any better for him as the season progresses.
"Max drove a good race from 11th to [fourth], finishing ahead of his nearest championship rival so extending his lead there,” he told the media in the paddock after the race.
“For Checo, obviously second to [seventh], but with the fastest lap. We need to have a good look at that," he acknowledged. "Obviously, we didn’t want to go from second to [seventh].
“We need to go through it all and have a good look," he continued, focusing on the team's hopes of retaining the constructors championship from the likes of McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes. "Obviously we need both cars scoring.
"We can see McLaren have taken, I think, another seven or eight points out of us today in the constructors, and we need to stop that.
"We’ve got to bounce back after the summer break," he added. "We need Checo up there. Yesterday he was great in qualifying, unfortunately today hasn’t quite worked out.”
Perez refused to be drawn on questions about his future at Red Bull. “I think we have too much going on in the team — a lot of things that we have to focus on, and we cannot waste any energy with all this speculation around it.
“So this is the last time I will speak about the future. To make it clear for everyone, I will not be speaking anymore," he said. “I will not answer any more questions on the future.”
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
The post Red Bull to hold review into 'really bad race' for Perez appeared first on F1i.com.
