What Christian Horner said about Sergio Perez and Red Bull’s different specifications

Sergio Perez raced to sixth place in the 2024 Dutch Grand Prix.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner believes Sergio Perez can take the positives from his sixth-place finish at Zandvoort.

Perez qualified fifth and raced to sixth place in the Dutch Grand Prix, scoring his best result since finishing fourth at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in May.

Christian Horner: Sergio Perez did a solid job

After some sporadic form through the middle portion of the championship, Perez returned to a decent haul of points at Zandvoort after producing a reasonably strong weekend.

Qualifying fifth place on Saturday without incident was followed by a race to sixth, after he was overcome by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz as the Spaniard recovered from his 11th-place grid slot, and team boss Christian Horner was pleased that his driver had contributed to the team’s Constructors’ Championship tally.

“I thought he did a solid job. I mean, if you look at his pace in the race, it was decent,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com, after the race.

“Sainz had pace – at one point, he had the fastest lap of the whole race.

“But I thought Checo [Perez], staring P5 and finishing P6, I thought that was a very solid drive by him today.

“Obviously, he lost a position at the start, which was a little frustrating for him but I think that, actually, he’ll take quite a lot of positives out of his performance here, and hopefully puts him on a good trajectory for Monza.”

With Perez having reverted back to a previous specification floor, and resulting setup, on his car, Horner revealed that, based on feedback, it appeared Perez had been the happier Red Bull driver with the feeling of his car.

“We’ve run the cars in different specifications, and I think that that has actually given us quite a lot of valuable info,” he said.

“I think that the driver’s feedback has been very positive into that as well, in terms of what they’re feeling from the different setups. So I think it, hopefully, now gives a real direction for the engineering group.

“I think it was clear that Checo’s race package got the better of the two. But we’ve got all 72 laps of data, across two different compounds of tyres now, to compare that info.”

Perez has had to weather plenty of speculation about his future with Red Bull in recent months, with the Mexican having his seat come under pressure as Daniel Ricciardo and Liam Lawson were both linked with a possible mid-season swap.

Perez has been given the chance to steady the ship as Horner committed to keeping the 2023 championship runner-up in the RB20 for the foreseeable, although questionable form over the next handful of races could still end up with a change of heart if Red Bull’s championship lead is wiped out by McLaren.

More on Red Bull and the Dutch Grand Prix

Inside Red Bull: Christian Horner and the other major players in Red Bull’s hierarchy

F1 points all-time rankings: Where do Hamilton, Verstappen and Alonso feature?

Sergio Perez: Positives are we understand the car now

Reflecting on his own race afterward, Perez said he suspected that, without one or two corners of the Zandvoort circuit in which he was losing most time, he and Verstappen could have been much stronger.

“Not happy, we didn’t have the pace today,” he said.

“We are still really hard on tyres, and our medium-speed performance was very weak, I think, taking Turns 9/10 of the circuit.

“I think, without it, we would look a lot more competitive. I think we were suffering a lot with the conditions, with the tailwind, and probably McLaren and Ferrari were not suffering that much.”

But, having finally delivered his best result in eight race weekends, Perez said the differing setups he and Verstappen had run had allowed for a lot of understanding of the Red Bull RB20.

“I think the positive thing is that we understand now what’s going on with the car,” he said.

“That’s really positive. It’s just a question of how quickly we can fix the issues that we have but we know where we’re lacking and where the issues are.

“Going forward, hopefully, we can pick it up and, from Monza, we can be a lot more competitive.”

With Perez having reverted back to a previous specification floor on his car, the Mexican driver was tight-lipped on whether he had found the car an improvement from running the latest specification.

“I think there are a lot of things that will stay within the team, but I think, right now, the main focus is to understand the issue,” he said.

“We know the way we have developed the car, we’ve lost some path, and we’re definitely trying to bring it back.”

Read Next: Fernando Alonso investigates McLaren car as untelevised on-board footage emerges