Red Bull ‘desperately’ need Perez to recover form – Horner

Christian Horner says Red Bull will “sit down” with Sergio Perez to discuss how the Mexican can recover his form to help him defend his runner-up spot in the Drivers’ championship.

Perez still holds a 30-point advantage over third-placed man Lewis Hamilton in the standings, but that gap could have compressed further in Qatar had the Mercedes driver not eliminated himself from the race with a first corner collision with teammate George Russell.

Perez has been outscored by Hamilton in the last three races due to mistakes or his inability to lift his performance.

At Lusail, Perez was eliminated from Saturday’s sprint event through no fault of his own. But on Sunday, after progressing up the order following a pitlane start, the Red Bull driver’s race crumbled under the weight of three five-second penalties handed to him for repeatedly exceeding track limits.

• Read also: Team Talk - Sunday in Lusail

He nevertheless managed to salvage a point for his efforts while his teammate Max Verstappen celebrated his third world title with another dominant performance at the head of the field.

"I think we really need to sit down with Checo because we know what he's capable of and he's not hitting that form at the moment," said Horner.

"We desperately need him to find that form to keep this second place in the championship.

"So, it was frustrating that he's only come out of the weekend with one point and I think he could have, even starting from the back of the grid, there was an opportunity to score heavily today or decently.”

Horner highlighted the importance for Perez to take advantage of F1’s upcoming string of events – including his home race in Mexico – to collect as many points as possible to defend his runner-up spot in the championship.

“We'll support him as much as we can because there's the triple header coming up [United States, Mexico, Brazil]. There's a huge amount of points with sprint races as well,” insisted Horner.

“I think you just need to sometimes sort of take your foot off, put it on the floor, stop the merry-go-round and just go back to basics. And that's what we'll do.

“We all know what Checo is capable of and we want to support him to get back into a position where even as near ago as Monza, he was finishing in second place to Max.”

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