Red Bull Racing chief Helmut Marko is a notoriously difficult man to please as Sergio Perez has found out during his time with the team.
The Mexican driver will be partnering Max Verstappen at Red Bull until at least the end of the 2025 Formula 1 season after signing a new contract.
However, since putting pen to paper, Sergio Perez’s form has been questionable, to say the least.
Since his Sprint Race podium finish in Miami, he’s finished 4, 8 and 8 with retirements in Monaco and Canada sandwiched between those last two results.
Speaking to the Austrian broadcaster OE24, Helmut Marko was addressing Perez’s most recent performance at the Spanish Grand Prix.
It was a far-from-perfect performance once again considering how well Max Verstappen drove to secure his seventh Grand Prix win of the season.
Marko has now told Perez that he can’t afford to have any weaknesses at all during a race weekend.
It’s a thought echoed by Danica Patrick when covering the race for Sky Sports F1 who suggested that Perez has to get up to speed earlier to avoid missing out in qualifying.
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Helmut Marko tells Sergio Perez he ‘can’t afford’ to show weakness again this season
Reflecting on the race for Red Bull, Marko said: “Checo [Perez] started much further back [than Max Verstappen].
“But it’s true. Now that everything is so close together, you can’t afford any weaknesses.”
While Perez did start further back thanks to a grid penalty, Red Bull have to take a small amount of the blame for that.
It was his mistake in difficult conditions in Canada that caused him to crash and destroy his rear wing.
However, instead of stopping on track when his wing could have fallen off at any point, Red Bull instructed him to return to the pit lane and that forced the stewards to hand him a three-place penalty.
Unfortunately for Perez, that’s where he needs to start taking responsibility and once again his performance over one lap wasn’t good enough.
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Sergio Perez still failing to fix crucial issue Christian Horner pointed out last season
Perez was the first Red Bull driver in their history to achieve a one-two finish in the Drivers’ Championship despite the prolonger dominance of Verstappen and previously Sebastian Vettel.
However, towards the end of the 2023 campaign, Christian Horner warned Perez that he must improve his displays in qualifying.
At the beginning of the year, he appeared to have taken that information onboard but since McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari have closed the gap to Red Bull, he’s struggled.
In Spain, knowing he had a three-place penalty to overcome, he could still only set the eighth-fastest time in Q3.
It meant that he was out-qualified by Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and only beat one other driver from the top four teams because Oscar Piastri failed to set a time.
Perez was relegated to 11 on the grid and his three-stop strategy saw him narrowly finish ahead of both Alpine drivers after getting stuck behind Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas for way too long.
The Mexican driver will be aware of the pressure he’s under and Helmut Marko is never one to shy away from making a tough decision if he has to.
The post ‘It’s true’: Helmut Marko now tells Sergio Perez what he ‘can’t afford’ to do anymore after Spanish Grand Prix appeared first on F1 Oversteer.