Red Bull offer Perez F1 title hope despite woes

Ewan Gale
Saturday 16 July 2022 13:00

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has insisted Sergio Perez is "absolutely" still in the title race despite dropping valuable points in Austria.

The Mexican was penalised for exceeding track limits in qualifying, and after starting 13th recovered to finish fifth but lost ground to championship-leading team-mate Max Verstappen.

Perez was then hit by George Russell on the opening lap of the grand prix, with the resultant damage eventually leading to a second retirement in three races.

Asked if Perez was still in the title battle, Horner replied: “Absolutely. We’re only just at the halfway point of the championship, things swing around quite a lot, and there is still an awfully long way to go.

“It’s frustrating from a constructors’ position and Ferrari obviously had their own issue, so I would say the weekend was damage limitation in that we managed to get the pole, the sprint victory and conceded to second place.

“Max only lost five points to Charles [Leclerc] in the drivers’, and damage has been relatively contained in the constructors’.”

Horner dismisses Perez upgrade issues

Perez was matching Verstappen pace-wise earlier in the year and drove beautifully on his way to victory at the Monaco Grand Prix, at which stage he was only 15 points adrift of Verstappen.

Red Bull's latest upgrade package, however, has seemingly driven performance towards Verstappen, who is now 57 points clear of his team-mate.

Referring to the upgrade, Horner said: “I’m not sure that is entirely correct. Set-up is crucial.

"I think that Checo was very competitive in the race at Silverstone and he will have races where we know he will perform very well.

“Certainly, the developments aren’t being driven in one direction. It’s just an overall car performance improvement.”

Additional reporting by Ian Parkes