Does Sergio Perez have to fear for his Formula 1 cockpit at Red Bull after missing five Q3 sessions in qualifying? Sports director Helmut Marko denied this after the British Grand Prix in Silverstone and said in “ORF”: “His position is not at risk at all.”
That’s how Perez sees it himself. He thinks he has “the full support of Helmut and Christian [Horner]” Certainly and says: “The whole team is behind me. It knows what I can do. It knows my potential.”
Rumors that he could be replaced by Red Bull test driver Daniel Ricciardo, he simply “completely” hides, says Perez. “I couldn’t be more indifferent. I don’t worry about that. Because I’ve been in Formula 1 for 13 years now. I’ve experienced everything.”
Shortly before the summer break, he is concerned with “how I can save my season” and “that I continue to enjoy it,” said Perez.
“I think the devil is in the details”
But the fun factor may have dropped recently, with more and more failures in qualifying. Perez doesn’t have a simple solution ready for this, just “a few ideas” that he wants to try out together with the team in the simulator on Monday after the race at Silverstone.
“I think the devil is in the details,” says Perez. “In the most recent races I’ve become a bit more sensitive to the car, especially on Saturday with little fuel. But we work with such a limited range of details.”
It is clear to him that a “strong Saturday” is incredibly important. But Perez says: Saturday isn’t everything. “And it’s positive that the pace is there on Sunday. That’s when the points are awarded. But we still have to manage to have a clean weekend. Because the pace is right.”
Formula 1: Marko defends Perez
According to his own statement, Red Bull sports director Marko would sign the latter. Perez was “the fastest man in the field in the last ten laps” at Silverstone and also drove faster than Max Verstappen, according to Marko in the “ORF”.
The results don’t reflect that: On lap 42, Perez was eighth, 9.6 seconds behind Verstappen, and at the finish in P6 it was 12.8 seconds. Perez was only faster than his teammate in certain areas and by a few tenths in individual laps.
Perez’s Grand Prix performance, going from P15 to P6, was “impeccable”, says Marko, just like his racing speed. On top of that, Perez saw the checkered flag one position ahead of Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin. “That means the lead in third place has increased a bit again. That’s our goal,” says Marko.
His conclusion: “Everything fits, except for qualifying. But we’ll get that under control.”
The only question is how Perez plans to do it. Perez himself says: “I think it’s my driving style and how I approach Saturday, how we do it as a team. We have to look at that. It’s about the details. The recent qualifying sessions took place in mixed weather, and it’s all about the details.”
“But I’m not worried about that. We just have to get qualifying under control and then everything will be fine. And we’re making progress. We’ve had a couple of bad weekends, but the bottom line is how it ends in Abu Dhabi . The season is long and I’m totally confident that I can get my season back on track.”
“We had a great start, but…”
For the race Sunday at Silverstone, for example, he has nothing to blame himself for, says Perez: “We gave everything and did the best we could.”
However, the circumstances in the Grand Prix would not have allowed for a better result. “It didn’t work at all,” says Perez.
He explains: “We had a great start, but then I was pushed off the track by Ocon on lap one. As a result, I lost positions instead of winning. That made it difficult for me to catch up.”
However, Perez also made life difficult for himself before Turn 1 by trying the outside lane to the left of Ocon. There he promptly ran out of space because Ocon drove further to the outside, and Perez had to dodge into the run-off zone. Logan Sargeant in the Williams and Yuki Tsunoda in the AlphaTauri used this.
And it remained problematic for Perez: On lap four he used a driving error by Nico Hülkenberg to pass the Haas driver. “There was a touch,” says Perez. His right rear wheel touched Hülkenberg’s front wing and the end plate broke off. “A minor racing incident,” Perez calls it. “I was lucky not to get a puncture.”
The tires were still an issue: he had put too much strain on his medium tires in the starting phase, says Perez. “And then I came into the pits, I think, three laps before the safety car period. So it just wasn’t supposed to be. Because with a bit of luck we could have finished further up the field.”