2024-07-19 08:00:00
Well, things didn’t get better for Sergio Pérez at the British Grand Prix, they got worse. After the disastrous result, the head of Red Bull, Christian Horner, was not calm with the driver from Mexico: “it is unsustainable not to score points. We have to score points with that car and he knows that.”
If Red Bull continues to be the most dominant car on the field – although they are getting closer and closer – “Checo” must fight for the podium in all the races and not be left out of the points. The Mexican, however, is optimistic: “I’ve been in the business for a long time, I know that if I have a good weekend in the upcoming races my season will look very different.”
That’s absolutely true, but it’s also true that Sergio Pérez seems to have his head elsewhere and maybe that’s because he’s very involved in marketing issues that he shouldn’t be involved in, but it goes we are in parts.
In sports, at Silverstone, he made a mistake in Q1 when he lost control of the vehicle in the rain, leaving the trajectory, and then had the misfortune of falling into the sand trap, which led to a flag red and remove it. from the classification. Pérez asked on the radio to push him and that was enough to continue in the competition, which they had to deny that this would be a mechanical aid and that the regulations prohibited a return Back. Can you imagine Fernando Alonso asking for help like that without knowing what it would mean?
In the race, “Checo” did not improve and finished in 17th place. Without taking responsibility, he blamed the result on the terrible strategy of the race, in which they considered a spill that never came. While this is true, it is also true that if he had been the driver we all know, it would have been much more difficult for his team to accept a decision that he has rejected on other occasions.
Now the Mexican has dropped another place in the ranking and is now in sixth place – with just 14 points in the last 6 Grand Prix -, after Oscar Piastri passed him. This year, races have been won by Max Verstappen (7), Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sáinz, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, that is, both McLaren drivers, both from Ferrari and both from Mercedes, but in Red Bull. , Verstappen is the only one who showed his face and Pérez Mendoza was not close.
And the statements of “Checo” against the team’s decisions or his attempt to be “pushed” back into the reputation of the British Doctor are a result of his head being somewhere else. So, it seems that “Old Man Tasty” who is loved by his engineers and who celebrates a lot when he gets results, has missed that communion.
First, the problems didn’t stop with his engineer Hugh Bird, those that Red Bull admitted bothered him last season, and they could be seen from the scolding Sergio gave him in the Australian GP. That seems to have rubbed off on the rest of the team and things are tense.
This tension increases due to rumors that there could be a replacement to give the seat to young Liam Lawson, because he is not complying with the performance clauses of his new contract. This Thursday, the 22-year-old New Zealand driver hit the race pace required by Red Bull on the record day before he heads into practice for the GP in Hungary.
I am also going to claim the content of the article from a few weeks ago: The distractions due to the apparent need to generate money that he did not show before – like the one I told you with that tequila sponsored him – was “Checo ” has already resulted in him arguing with one of his long-time sponsors about a job he left out of his official cap, and making him look bad with a new sponsor he offered a spot for. in the car not authorized by Red Bull.
So the answer to what’s wrong with ‘Checo’? It seems that he went into a “perfect storm”, that the engineering team is not ready for the task, there is tension inside and the head of Mexico is somewhere else, not only because he pays too much attention to his economic income, but because that can mean that this attention is taken away from the most important thing: the car, a car that he doesn’t know well enough to exploit as he should. And a driver who does not know his car is doomed to failure. There is time in the season to correct course, but it is urgent to do so before the consequences are irreversible.
#Checo #p.2 #Financiero