‘There’s a reason we extended my contract’ – Sergio Perez confident of turning things around as he dismisses Red Bull future concerns

“It’s been one of my best starts of the year, with four races in a row on the podium – things were looking good,” said the six-time race winner. “But as soon as we got back to Europe I think our season turned around. Other teams improved and found a lot of performance, on our side we lost our way a bit with the car.

“There were a lot of weekends where things didn’t come in, a lot of weekends have been too difficult just in terms of us looking at all areas (of the car) and at the end of the day there’s only so much you can do on a weekend where we ended up dropping a lot of points and the season turned out to be much more difficult.

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“But I think that’s how it is in Formula 1, sometimes things don’t go your way. We’re still here and optimistic, we can turn things around as a team, especially for next year.”

Pushed to explain further why things had changed so much since the good races earlier in 2024, Perez replied: “I think it’s very difficult for people to understand who are not part of the team, or around daily basis, why from one race to another you are so far away.

“I think when you’re not able to get 100 percent out of your car, it’s irrelevant how good the car is, and (this) is what happened. I haven’t been able to pull 100 percent out of my car because of the difficulties I’ve had in the last few months with it, and I think that’s the main problem.