Sergio Perez was on the defensive again today in Qatar in the paddock and he is adamant that he will be on the F1 grid with Red Bull next season.
Perez’s future continues to be a hot topic amid his run of poor performances and his own bosses have spoken of a decision after the final in Abu Dhabi.
But the Mexican, who has not finished on the podium since the Chinese Grand Prix last April, is categorical: he is unstoppable!
At Thursday’s pre-race press conference in Qatar, Perez was asked if he had “100% confidence” in being on the grid next year with Red Bull.
He simply replied: “Yes, exactly. I have a contract, I will be there, 100%.”
“It’s very difficult for people who aren’t part of the team or who aren’t there on a daily basis to understand why from one race to the next you’re so far away.”
“I think when you’re not able to get 100% out of your car, it doesn’t matter how good your car is. That’s what happened. I couldn’t get 100% out of it. % of my car because of the difficulties I’ve had over the last few months I think that’s the main problem.”
“You go through periods. As a team we are understanding and we work very hard to make sure we can resolve them.”
Over the last 14 races, Perez has scored just 43 points, with sixth place as his best result. Isn’t that too little, whatever these famous problems? After all, Verstappen manages to get by…
Perez frowns!
“I think Max has had his best season in the last four years. His talent and speed have been there since day one, but outside of the car the way he works and pushes the team has improved.”
“It was one of my best starts to the season, everything seemed to be going well. But as soon as we returned to Europe, things changed. We got a little lost with the car, a lot of weekends were too difficult.”
“We ended up losing a lot of points and this season was very difficult. But that’s how it is, sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to.”
“And for me… at the end of the day, the team has all the information. I can’t say much here. There’s a reason why we extended my contract mid-year. The team has everything. We know exactly where we are in terms of performance, in terms of the problems, the difficulties that we have encountered.
“We’re a team and we know internally exactly where everything is. We’re working really hard as a team to get through this and come back to a much better season than we just had.”
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