“Doing our best to support him”: Christian Horner affirms faith in Sergio Perez amid disappointing F1 spell

Following Sergio Perez's dismal qualifying performance in the Austrian GP weekend, Red Bull boss Christian Horner reaffirmed his confidence in the Mexican driver and is determined to help Perez improve his performance.

With a commanding performance, Max Verstappen left his competitors in the dust, securing pole position. His closest rival, Lando Norris, trailed him by 0.404 seconds, while Sergio Perez, on used softs, ended up 0.888 seconds behind his teammate.

Christian Horner acknowledged Sergio Perez's poor qualifying form in recent weeks. The Red Bull team principal believes Perez can bounce back, citing his strong qualifying efforts at the beginning of the season. He highlighted that Perez was only one-tenth off his teammate's pace at the challenging Suzuka Circuit.

Horner added that the team will investigate the decline in qualifying pace and help Perez recover to his previous form. He told Sky Sports F1:

"We're doing our best to support him to find out what he's missing because the first four, five races were very competitive, in Suzuka, one of the toughest track, he's a tenth of a second from Max."

"Here with nine corners, the gap is of course significantly bigger, and whatever happened that caused him to dropped off, we need to get to the bottom of it and help him recover."

Sergio Perez had a solid start to his 2024 F1 campaign, with four podium results in the first five races, and qualified within the top five in the first six races, with two front-row starts. His qualifying struggles began in Imola and he has not started from the top 10 in the previous four races.

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Sergio Perez explains his deficit to Max Verstappen

The Mexican driver explained that he was short-handed in the Q3 session as he had no new soft tires remaining. He had to utilize an extra set in the Q1 session, compromising his options for the decisive top-10 shootout.

Sergio Perez reckoned he could have closed the gap to Lando Norris, attributing the four-tenths of a second difference to the disparity in tires.

"Unfortunately, we didn't have the new tire in Q3. Even when the margins, at times, we were looking within one-tenth from P2. But unfortunately, we arrived into Q3 and we had no new tires left," he was quoted as saying by RacingNews365.com

"The margin, I think it was four-tenths to Lando and I think a big chunk of that is the new tire, unfortunately. With the strategy we had just for four sets of new Softs so we paid a little bit the price. Q1 was extremely tight, tighter than we predicted."

Christian Horner also acknowledged that Perez was on the backfoot, having to use the scrubbed set of tires in the Q3 session. However, he is confident that Perez will move up the grid in the race.