Horner: Checo Perez desperately needs a good result

 

 Red Bull boss Christian Horner has asked for one last great performance for the 2024 season from Mexican Checo Pérez, who is experiencing his worst moment with the Austrian team and will start from sixteenth position this Saturday in the Sprint race of the Qatar Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the championship.

Horner pointed out that Checo Pérez has had a “terrible” season since the Monaco Grand Prix and the Guadalajara native himself has accepted that he has not felt comfortable in the RB20.

“Checo Perez desperately needs a good result. I mean he's had a horrible season since Monaco, so he desperately needs to get a great result here or next weekend,” he told Viaplay.

The British manager spoke about Checo Perez's poor qualifying, where he was eliminated in SQ1 by finishing in sixteenth place, and noted that they will analyze the data, since Sergio pointed out that his lap was ruined by Charles Leclerc.

“I'm not sure what was going on with Charles. Unfortunately, Checo hasn't managed to get enough out of the car to get through [SQ1 and move on to] SQ2. So it's frustrating to lose him in SQ1. So we'll take a look at the data and see what we can change after the sprint race tomorrow,” Horner said about Checo's performance.

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In an interview with ESPN, Checo Perez detailed the incident he experienced with Charles Leclerc during the last lap in which he sought to advance to SQ2.

“Charles opened up the gap on the last lap and we fought in turns one and two and I lost crucial tenths that left me out of qualifying. Unfortunate, because we had a lot more to do, because we improved the car a lot from practice one to now,” he said.

Since the Dutch Grand Prix to date, Checo Pérez has only scored 21 points, with Zandvoort being where he scored the most points, with eight. Pérez only scored two points during the Grand Prix in America with the Grand Prix in Austin, Mexico City and Las Vegas.

Qatar GP schedule

The Sprint race will be held this Saturday at 8:00 a.m. (9:00 a.m. ET), while qualifying for the race will be at 12:00 p.m. (1:00 p.m. ET). The Qatar Grand Prix race will be held on Sunday at 10:00 a.m. (11:00 a.m. ET).