Perez ‘just needs strong weekend’ amid tough run – Horner

Red Bull boss Christian Horner believes Sergio Perez just needs a strong weekend to recapture his early-season form after a difficult run of events.

Perez won two of the opening four grands prix before finishing runner-up to team-mate Max Verstappen in Miami.

But he has endured three sub-par events in Monaco, Spain and Canada, emanating from underwhelming results in qualifying.

Perez crashed out of Q1 in Monaco before dropping out of qualifying at the second hurdle in both Spain and Canada.

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Perez failed to take points in Monaco prior to salvaging fourth in Spain and sixth in Canada, but is now 69 points behind Verstappen, who has won the last four events.

“I think he just needs a good weekend to just lift his confidence,” said Horner.

“He’s had three difficult weekends and three difficult Saturdays that then puts you on the back foot on a Sunday.

“We’ve seen what Checo’s capable of only a month or two ago, I think he just needs to have a strong weekend to find that confidence and then I have no doubt he’ll be back.”

Horner outlined that Perez “was struggling, like the others, to generate tyre temperature [in qualifying] and of course that’s something that Max has always been very strong at with the way he drives the car and so on.

“Checo started on the Hard tyre, he’d lost a little bit of touch [with the cars ahead] before the stop. On the Mediums he had similar issues to the Hard, but then had a free gap, and that’s why we banked the fastest lap.”