Perez Dismisses His Difficulties In Last Three Races Could Be Similar To 2023

Friday, 21 June 2024 at 10:00

Sergio Perez dismissed claims his last year's slump could be similar to what we've seen from him in the previous three Grand Prix weekends.

In the three Grand Prix weekends leading up to the Spanish Grand Prix, Sergio Perez scored a mere four points for his team, Red Bull Racing, which allowed rivals like Ferrari and McLaren to close in.

In 2023, the Mexican driver had a part of the season where his performances declined significantly; he struggled with qualifying and then always had to make up for his loss in the race.

The 34-year-old's weekend turned wrong during qualifying for both the Canada and Monaco Grand Prix (the last two races). On both occasions, he qualified only in P16.

As this is very reminiscent of what we had seen from the Mexican in 2023, F1 fans started wondering whether he started having the same problems yet again. However, speaking to the media in Barcelona, Perez dismissed this option.

"Yeah, they're different. We're in a much better place with the car and our understanding of things. Last year, we tried to compensate too many things with the set-up."

"We just made quite a bit worse. I believe we're in a much better situation and [better] understanding of the situation, so the way the issues have happened in the last few events has just put us on the back foot in the last few events."

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Canadian Grand Prix issues:

The Canadian Grand Prix weekend was especially tough for the Mexican driver as while he struggled, his teammate Max Verstappen showed Red Bull's car was capable of winning that race. Checo said about the weekend in Montreal:

"Yeah, after the weekend, we found a lot of issues that we had. It's a weekend we can get rid of [write-off] as we didn't have just one issue."

"At the time, we thought we had one issue. When we looked after it, there were a couple more issues. So just a bad weekend overall, just looking back to where we can be here."

There was a one-week break between the Canadian Grand Prix and the tenth round of the 2024 season at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Perez says he used it to work with his team at the Milton Keynes factory to eliminate the problems.

"We've been working very hard the last few days back in the factory. We've got a pretty good understanding of things. In Formula 1, we live in a world with such small margins that a few things haven't been in the right spot."

"But the good thing about it is that I know if I can do a good race, I can get my momentum back that I had not long ago."