It was a bad day for Sergio Pérez in the Belgian Grand Prix after starting P2. At the start, he immediately lost a place to Lewis Hamilton, and he spent most of the afternoon struggling on the straights.
He finished the race in P8, promoted to 7th after George Russell’s disqualification.
Pérez entered the Belgian round with lots of speculation about his future following a poor run of performances which allowed Red Bull’s rivals to close in.
He was understandably disappointed to fall away and blamed his RB20’s lack of competitiveness on the straights, most notably on the Kemmel one with DRS.
“Yeah, it was a very disappointing race. It started, I would say, well I was just struggling a lot on the straights.
“I don’t know what was going on but I had to save battery early on in the first couple of laps and I was just very weak on the straights. And once I managed to clear it, [and] charge it back a bit, I was pretty much [on] the same [pace] as Lewis and Charles, I was staying there.“
Pérez had a hard time in his second stint with the mediums, coming off them very quickly and doing the second half of the race on one set of hards. Red Bull hauled him in as he was just in front of teammate Max Verstappen at the time. It left him totally vulnerable later in the race.
Red Bull were at a disadvantage on Sunday, having only one set of hards compared to McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari who all had two.
“But then the second stint, jumping onto the medium tyre with all the traffic behind, it just made it really, really difficult, very tricky. And we did quite a short stint [on the mediums] as well, so we were just out of sync.
“I think we were just not good with tyres today. Balance wasn’t there as well, so yeah, plenty of things to analyse on our side.
“I don’t know [why]. I think there are some strategic reasons behind it, but I don’t know why we went so short, so long. I think we were obviously very compromised by having just two sets of mediums.
“So again, I think strategically it wasn’t a perfect execution. It’s something that we will get together as a team and obviously understand and learn from it.”
The summer break can’t come soon enough for Pérez and Red Bull. There is plenty for them to understand and improve as McLaren and Mercedes have won the last four races, with the RB20 not having the raw pace either driver would want.
“I think it comes in a good time for the team, for myself. I think there’s plenty of stuff that we need to go through and see what we are able to achieve and hopefully get back to it.
“Yeah, I think there are plenty of things that we need to analyse, but I think Mercedes’ pace was very impressive. We couldn’t match the Ferraris either. Plenty of stuff to understand.”
Pérez’s future with Red Bull has been the talk of the town in recent weeks, so it’s no surprise if the Belgian Grand Prix would prove critical in deciding his fate.
RB’s Daniel Ricciardo or reserve driver Liam Lawson are tipped to replace the 34-year-old should he fail to convince the Milton Keynes-based team why they should retain him.
Nonetheless, Pérez is “confident” and 100% certain that his Red Bull seat will still be his after the summer break.
“Yesterday I had a good qualifying, a good day. It doesn’t change anything. 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 surrounding.
“This is the last time I will speak about the future, so just to make it clear for everyone, I will not be speaking anymore. I will not answer any more questions about my future.”
