Sergio Perez is determined to recoup his early season form this weekend in Montreal, but the Red Bull driver denies that there he is no longer under pressure to deliver the goods.
Perez and teammate Max Verstappen traded wins in the first four races of the season, but the Mexican has since lost his footing in the championship relative to the Dutchman after a disastrous Monaco Grand Prix weekend marked by a crash in Q1 and more qualifying pains in Spain.
Perez heads into this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix with a 53-point deficit to Verstappen.
"Basically, I want to reset, go again," he told the media in Montreal.
"Basically, Monaco was all down to me, I had a really bad mistake. But then in Barcelona in the qualifying again, it was tricky with the damp conditions, we didn't manage to have a good quali, and then we paid the price on Sunday.
"So I think I'm looking forward to getting back on the form we had in the early season."
After Perez's run to P4 in Barcelona, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner suggested that the Mexican's near impossible task of catching Verstappen in the Drivers' standings would relieve the pressure on the former.
But Perez begged to differ with his team boss.
"Well no, I don't think so," he said. "I think we all have to deliver to our maximum and we just have to make sure we will deliver.
"We have a great car, and we should be having a lot of podiums, wins and so on from now till the end of the year.
"We can see that the competition is getting closer and closer all the time, but we will try our best."
Read also:
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Regardless of his chances of bridging the gap to his teammate in the championship, Perez acknowledged however that he could no longer afford any bad weekends, especially given Verstappen's unwavering consistency.
"Well, I think he has been able to deliver when it mattered in qualifying, and he hasn't had bad weekends at all this year," he said. "And I think it's what I need. I cannot afford to have any bad weekends anymore.
"I think I've had two or three bad weekends in the season. So I really have to get rid of those and keep the consistency high. Because I think it's something that Max has been really good and consistent throughout this period."
It's been suggested that Perez has been too focused on his desire to beat Verstappen, a man currently considered as the fastest driver in the sport.
Queried on his teammate's plight, the Dutchman encouraged Perez to keep his head down and only focus on himself.
"I find it difficult to comment on that because I don't know what's going on in his head," said the two-time world champion.
"But I always learned from a young age it's better to just focus on yourself and try to do the best you can because all the other things are out of your control anyway.
"So there's no point to try and focus on that. And that's also how I approach it.
"I mean, you have always in a season that some races are not going to plan or you have setbacks, but it's very important just to stay focused on the job and really try to work with the car and the engineers around it to get the best out of it."
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