ZANDVOORT, Netherlands — Sergio Pérez said he is focused on turning around his Formula One form, which he feels confident about after Red Bull’s discovery of wrong turns made in developing its car.
Pérez’s future at the team was the subject of intense speculation before the summer break but Red Bull opted against a mid-year change.
“It was pure speculation,” Pérez said on Thursday.
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Red Bull’s decision was made on the first day after the summer break after a meeting between team boss Christian Horner and Red Bull racing advisor Helmut Marko.
“The meeting had nothing to do with the drivers, it was to all about the performance. I already said everything I had to regarding the speculation. I’m fully committed to the team,” Pérez said.
“I’ve got a contract and I’m fully committed to Red Bull and to turn things around. I’ve said everything I have to.”
When addressing the Red Bull team after that meeting, Horner added that Pérez has a run of races coming up where he has performed well in the past.
Pérez said it is still on him to turn things around and not rely on his experience at those venues.
“I think there’s some good circuits where I’ve had good races [coming up] but we’ve already been to circuits where I’ve had good races,” Pérez said.
“I think the most important is we get myself in the window where I can extract the potential of the car. It’s still a Red Bull and it’s a b***** fast car, you know? It’s just been tricky lately to extract the maximum.
“We’ve been quite hard on on the tyres. There’s a lot of things to improve in the next ten races.”
Red Bull has spent a long time digging into the issues which have seen its once-dominant car fall into a three-way fight with McLaren and Mercedes for the constructors’ championship at recent races.
Pérez has struggled most of all since Red Bull’s car took a backwards step at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in May and he feels the team has found some answers to those problems over the summer break.
“It was a very positive break for Red Bull, we were able to find a lot of stuff that I think we know at least where we are with the car right now. There’s been an upgrade or two that took us on the wrong path,” he said.
“I think just looking back at it right now we know exactly how the car is working which is a very good thing because it was not so clear in the last few races. Whether we can fix it and get back to the level we had earlier, that’s another question, but in that regard it’s very positive.”
He added: “It’s hard to explain the amount of detail but it’s not like at the beginning of the year I was a much better driver than I am now. Certainly there have been some things that didn’t go my way that were hurting me more and we were probably not extracting the maximum out of the car in that regard.”