They put an end to rumors about the future of F1’s most difficult but desirable seat.

“Checo” Perez to stay with Red Bull And he won’t be out of the car for the rest of this season, something Red Bull F1 Team Principal Christian Horner said to put an end to speculation about the Mexican’s future due to a lack of results.

“Despite recent speculation, Checo is still a Red Bull driver and we look forward to seeing him after the summer break at the circuit where he once excelled.” A team spokesman told portal RaceFans that Horner said:

After good starts in the first five races, the Mexican’s performance plummeted and rumours plagued the driver from Guadalajara (Mexico). There had been talk that he might be removed from his role as Max Verstappen’s teammate and replaced by a Red Bull Academy driver. Liam Lawsonand the drivers for the energy drink company’s “B” team (the Racing Bulls). Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda.

in fact, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko was responsible for fuelling the rumours, declaring a few weeks ago that “everything is open”. When asked about Perez’s future, Horner even said in Hungary that “it’s clear you can’t run on one leg.”This is a clear reference to the Mexican’s poor performance, which will have a major impact on Red Bull as they compete for a much tighter constructors’ world championship than usual, where the team only needed Max Verstappen’s points to win.

Poor performance, especially in “qualifications”

“Czech” problems lie in the classification for one reason or another. Sometimes they arise due to congestion, sometimes due to bad luck, sometimes due to mistakes. Monaco In the “qualifying round” I placed 16th. Canadaagain in 16th place. BarcelonaNo. 8 was a head start. In Austria he placed 7th in the sprint class and 8th in Saturday’s qualifying. Silverstoneand when we went to gravel I was 19th.

in HungaryBut he made another mistake and finished in 16th place. BelgiumDespite being six tenths behind his teammate on the time scale, finishing third in mixed conditions under maximum pressure saved him some difficult time and allowed him to start second, but he ended up in sixth place at Spa, while Max, who started 11th, finished fourth.

A car made for Max that is extremely complicated to drive.

His seat at Red Bull is currently the most coveted alongside Lewis Hamilton’s at Mercedes, but he also has some very complicated wheels at the wheel, which poses a huge challenge for Perez every weekend. Driving a car made by Max, for Max,what It’s very difficult to drive to the limit and That doesn’t suit the Mexican’s driving style, so he has to be compared to the best drivers on the grid in the maximum pressure environment at each GP..

Last year, he had the best car ever, so he was able to come back and do well. Now, with such a tight grid, McLaren and Mercedes Fight for victory, In the case of the Czech Republic, the situation is more complicated.

In fact, Verstappen has already said in an interview with MD that his preference for “setup” is “a good front end”.. He doesn’t mind if the rear end becomes unstable, because he controls it to the limit. He likes to drive more aggressive cars. As he already realizes with the 2023 MD, “Checo” suffers even more in such cars.

The Mexican pointed out to MD how much Red Bull has to reinvent itself as the car evolves throughout the year: “At the beginning of the year things come automatically, but as the car changes you have to look for a tenth of what you were before. It was something that came naturally with tuning the car in free practice. And then when the conditions change, all that set-up work goes undone.”Eventually the growth stops, the races go by, but sometimes you feel like… Oh no! I can’t do this like I did before and I have to look for it in my ‘setup’. And then as you evolve over the weekend and the conditions change, the parts that you’re not comfortable with become more pronounced in the more difficult conditions.”

With maximum pressure and stress, the task “Checo” faces every time he steps onto the track is no easy one, as he revealed in an interview with Sportish in Barcelona earlier this year. “Let’s say there was a ‘gap’ (difference). Since I came to Red Bull, I have been trying to look for things that are sometimes in the set-up (regulations), sometimes they may not exist. It’s not easy. You drive a car to drive fast, and then when you start to get more comfortable with your style, it puts stress on the tyres, you become slower in the corners and you start to have other problems.”If you want a car that is more suited to your style, the advantages of a single seater are lost.

They need you

Verstappen has 277 points with seven wins and two second places in 14 events and is the leader in the World Championship. The “Checo” had four podiums in the first five events but has not been on the podium since. He has 131 points and is seventh in the World Cup standings. etc. Red Bull lead the constructors’ championship by just 42 points over McLaren and 63 points over Ferrari. Red Bull needs Checo to take the crown again in the team rankings. Max is not good enough for him. And looking at his other drivers, the simulator data shows that no one can do better than this in Perez’s place.

To this we must add that “Checo” signed a two-year contract a few months ago, which is of course a key factor in F1 in the US and Mexico and a big source of income for Red Bull, whose life depends on merchandising (even more than Verstappen) and marketing power in selling cans.