Former Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg has been giving advice to Sergio Perez about to ride out his recent slump in performance.
The Red Bull driver started the season strongly and took two victories in the first four Grands Prix of 2023.
But since then, Perez had gone through a string of poor qualifying performances that compromised his race results between Miami and Hungary. As a result he's fallen 125 points behind team mate Max Verstappen in the standings.
The return of Daniel Ricciardo to the grid at sister team AlphaTauri has also piled on the pressure, with the Australian openly admitting that he his objective was a return to the Red Bull line-up in future.
Rosberg is sympathetic to Perez' plight, recalling his own days as team mate to Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes. He was keen to pass on his advice as to how he finally managed to clinch the 2016 title.
"I would recommend Sergio switch off all the media and everything, not look at social medi," Rosberg told the latest edition of the Sky Sports F1 podcast this week.
"He's going to be seeing so many memes going against him, comments going against him, journalists giving questions that are going against them, so you really need to separate yourself from that."
Rosberg acknowledged that it was a lesson he had learned from his own life. "I switched off my entire social media, email and the news world completely when I was fighting for the championship."
However, Rosberg admitted that there was no easy way to isolate oneself from the chatters surrounding the drivers in the sport. "The only problem is that he still has to go to the racetrack and sit in front of 50 journalists.
"They're going to ask him: 'Hey Sergio, you're looking like you're having the biggest struggle in your career. Do you think you're ever going to get out of this again?'
"That always hits you, because you have to listen," he said. "You can't ignore, you have to answer the questions.
"The next question is going to be: 'Hey Sergio, do you feel a threat from Daniel Ricciardo, do you feel that you might lose your seat?' It just goes on and on like that, and it's so hard because it just keeps on hitting you.
"That's one of the hardest parts of the weekend for Sergio at the moment to deal with," he added. "So it's about switching off, focusing."
Rosberg also advised Perez to stop comparing himself to his team mate, or making predictions that only come back to haunt him down the line.
"He was very focused on 'I want to beat Max, I want to be champion,' always saying that in the winter,' Rosberg noted. "It's time to just forget about that.
"Race weekend by race weekend, session by session, do a fantastic job," he stressed. "Prepare for it as best you can, risk manage out there, and just do a fantastic job and rebuild like that.
"That's what it's about, that's what he needs to try to do."
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