“I think it’s partly us”: Red Bull engineer’s take on Sergio Perez’s disastrous season

Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache talked about Sergio Perez's recent subpar performances. He admitted that the Mexican's decline could be partially because of the team as well.

During the first several races of the 2024 season, Sergio Perez maintained his position alongside teammate Max Verstappen in the drivers' standings. However, Checo's on-track pace and standing on the table plummeted after the Miami GP.

In subsequent races, the Mexican driver barely placed himself in the top-10 and retired from the Monaco and Canadian GPs. As he continued to struggle, reports emerged that Red Bull could replace him with Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda or Daniel Ricciardo.

Speaking to F1.com, Wache said that if he knew what could fix Perez's on-track performance, he would have done so. He said that, on occasions, Perez could simply be unlucky rather than not feeling good in the car.

"If I knew, I would fix it. It's difficult to say. I think it’s partly us, for sure, and it’s what we have to [do to] try to help him to extract the potential of the car. I have some feedback from him. We have some feedback. We try to help him," Wache said.

"The point is not only reflecting to how he feels in the car. Sometimes he’s unlucky, you know, it’s what happened in some quali [sessions] that could affect the overall result of the race," he added.

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Red Bull senior advisor's gloomy verdict on Sergio Perez's poor on-track performance

Red Bull's senior advisor Helmut Marko criticized Sergio Perez for not consistently performing in Grand Prixs.

In his exclusive column on Speedweek, the 81-year-old Austrian said that the race weekend in Hungary mapped Perez's usual Grand Prix performance graph. He explained how the driver performs well in Friday practices, makes a major mistake in qualifying and tries to make up the positions in the Sunday race.

"Let's talk about Sergio Pérez for a moment: A GP weekend that was typical of Pérez, I would say, unpredictable - very good on Friday, only just behind Verstappen and with the best long runs of all the drivers, then, unfortunately, a stupid mistake in qualifying, which resulted in 16th place on the grid, followed by a very strong race up to 7th place."

Helmut Marko added that Sergio Perez's erratic performance makes him inconsistent in most races.

"He continues to have this up and down, nobody knows when he will shine or when he will make a mistake, he simply lacks consistently good performance," Marko added.

After the Hungarian GP, Checo is seventh in the drivers' championship table with 124 points, while Max Verstappen leads with 265 points.