By Alan Baldwin
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Red Bull Formula One boss Christian Horner hailed Sergio Perez’s best Friday practice performance in months and revealed it came after a kitchen meeting to discuss the Mexican’s poor run of results.
Perez was fourth fastest in second practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix in a car with fewer upgrades than team mate Max Verstappen’s.
Triple world champion Verstappen was second fastest to McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Horner said it had been a positive day and revealed details of a meeting with Perez, who has scored just 15 points in the last six races and whose future at the champions has been questioned.
“We have a really open relationship and I sat down with him in the kitchen of my house and said, ‘come on, what’s going on? Is there something else?'” Horner told Sky Sports television.
“And he was like, ‘No, I think I’m just overthinking things a bit too much.’
“I think almost ignoring what’s going on on the other side of the garage will do him a favour, which is the approach that he’s taking now — just focusing on his own performance.”
Perez felt he had made a good step from the first to second session.
“We made the right changes and took the right direction. This is the most comfortable I have felt with the car at this stage of the weekend in a while,” he said.
“The steps we have made throughout the day have been the best we can do and that is really positive. We are feeling good and the long run looked promising too.
“Our time will come, it’s head down for now and look forward to tomorrow.”
Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache said it was hard to say why Perez had been struggling but the team needed to help him get more out of the car.
“We have some feedback. We try to help him,” he told reporters.
“Sometimes he’s unlucky, you know, it’s what happened in some qualifying that could affect the overall result of the race… we are trying to help him to have a better result for the next races before shutdown.”
Formula One goes into an August break after the Belgian Grand Prix on July 28.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
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