Sergio Perez insists he “couldn’t care less” that his future at the Red Bull Formula 1 team beyond this year is under growing speculation.
Perez is contracted at Red Bull until the end of 2024 but a major dip in form has fuelled talk that his seat could be under threat.
Since finishing second to Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen at the Miami Grand Prix, Perez has failed to reach the final part of qualifying at the last five races.
This has left the Mexican having to turn in some recovery drives to try and salvage as many points as he can, but he now sits 99 points behind Verstappen in the drivers’ championship.
Tuesday’s announcement that Daniel Ricciardo will replace Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri for the rest of the season is seen as a tactic by Red Bull to give Perez the hurry up to improve his current form.
But the six-time grand prix winner is not phased by the recent gossip, as he looks to turn around his qualifying struggles.
“Yeah, fully. I couldn’t care less if I’m honest about that,” said Perez, when asked if he was ignoring all the speculation, as by Motorsport.com.
“I’ve been in F1 13 years, and I’ve seen it all. Not worried about any of that. I’m mainly focused on getting my season on track, and making sure I keep enjoying this.”
Perez stressed he has retained the backing of both Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and motorsport advisor Helmut Marko.
“Yeah, I have full support from Helmut and Christian,” he said. “The whole team is fully backing me, and they know what I can do. They know my potential, and they are fully behind me.”
Although Perez feels his run of poor qualifying performances hasn’t been helped by a mix of dry/wet sessions, he believes he is close to addressing his recent slump.
“We’re making progress, because the pace is there on Sundays,” Perez said.
“But it’s just the whole weekend overall, we’ve had a few bad weekends. But at the end of the day it only matters where we finish in Abu Dhabi. So it’s a long season still, and I fully believe that I can get my season back on track.”
Perez managed to charge his way from 16th on the grid to sixth at Silverstone, but he admitted his recovery was more difficult than expected.
“I mean, nothing worked today [Sunday],” he said. “I had a great launch, but then I was pushed off by [Esteban] Ocon on lap one, and I lost positions instead of gaining. So it just made it harder, the recovery.
“I used my tyres too much on that first stint. And then we boxed I think three laps before the safety car. So it wasn’t meant to be. But in the end, we gave it all and we did what we possibly could.
“It was really, really hard to make progress. Especially at the end, when everyone is on the same tyre age, there is no tyre delta, it was really difficult to make any progress. Following through high-speed, it’s quite tricky.”
