Horner: Pérez GP failures are ‘unsustainable’

SILVERSTONE, England — Pressure continues to grow on Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez after he failed to score points for the third time in six races at the British Grand Prix on Sunday.

Team principal Christian Horner said the situation was “unsustainable,” underlining Red Bull’s need for Pérez to score points alongside championship leader Max Verstappen to bolster the team’s haul in the constructors’ standings.

Pérez has scored just 15 points from the last six races, while Verstappen has racked up 119 in the same period.

Red Bull leads Ferrari by 71 in the constructors’ standings.

“He knows it’s unsustainable to not be scoring points,” Horner said of Pérez. “We have to be scoring points in that car, and he knows that.

“He knows his role and his target. Nobody is more eager than Checo to get back and find his form again.”

Pérez signed a new two-year contract with Red Bull earlier this year, but his position could be under threat if he continues to underperform at the next two races ahead of F1’s summer break.

“I know where I am, in terms of contract and that sort of thing,” Pérez said after he finished 17th and two laps down at the British Grand Prix.

“I cannot let it be a distraction because I need to focus on the next two weekends, which are the priority and work together with the team to get out of this difficult period.”

Horner played down suggestions that an upcoming test for reserve driver Liam Lawson would be used to evaluate the New Zealander as a potential replacement for Pérez later this year.

“The problem is you read too much into these things, I’m actually doing a lap at Silverstone in the RB8 [Red Bull’s F1 car from 2012] on Thursday as well. So you never know!” Horner said.

“No, in all seriousness, the Liam test, aero run, has been planned for a couple of months now. Of course, Checo, of course he’s under pressure.

“That’s normal in Formula One. And when you’re underdelivering, that pressure only mounts.

“He’s aware of that, he knows that. This weekend, it just hasn’t, nothing has really gone his way.”

Pérez started from the pit lane at the British Grand Prix after spinning out of the first session of qualifying in damp conditions.

In the race, Red Bull gambled on switching his car to intermediate tyres in anticipation of a rain shower that didn’t fully hit the track until several laps later.

Running on a partially dry track, Pérez destroyed his wet weather tyres and was left several seconds off the pace before being lapped by the leaders.

“We took a gamble in the race,” Horner said. “He started on the hard tyre, he was making decent progress early on in the race. The rain started to arrive, he was P15 or 16 at the time, you roll the dice a little at that point as Ferrari did with [Charles] Leclerc.

“He went onto the inter. If the rain had picked up, he’d have looked a hero. It didn’t. So you don’t.

“And then he had an extra stop and the time loss of being on an inter on a drying track was hemorrhaging a lot of time for him. So yeah. Obviously a lot to look at from over the weekend.”