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Sergio Perez delivered “the best payback” with his performance in the Hungarian Grand Prix after piling the pressure on himself with a crash in the opening moments of practice, according to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.
After a miserable run of failing to reach Q3 at the previous five races, all of which Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen had won from pole position, the spotlight was on Perez to deliver at the Hungaroring.
The glare was even brighter for the Mexican following Daniel Ricciardo’s promotion from Red Bull third driver to a seat with AlphaTauri, and with the Australian making no bones about the fact he was eyeing a return to the senior team.
Although Perez managed to end his Q3 exile in Hungary, he again did himself no favours by only qualifying ninth, seven places behind Verstappen who missed out on another pole by 0.003s to Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton.
In the race, the 33-year-old at least started off on the road to redemption by claiming his first podium in 13 attempts at the track, rising to third behind Verstappen and McLaren’s Lando Norris.
“If you look at the progress Checo made from ninth on the grid, it was an outstanding drive from him,” said Horner.
When asked about Friday morning being the worst-case scenario, he added: “It was the best payback he could give his mechanics and the team. He will take a lot of confidence out of that. It was a big result for him.”
Responding to him being under pressure, Horner said: “The problem is, you guys wind things up, and you can go from hero to zero in this business pretty quickly. He’s not immune to that.
“Formula 1’s a pressure business, he knows that. He’s been around long enough to know the pressures that there are in Formula 1, and at Red Bull, sometimes that’s even more heightened.
“But he’s responded in the best possible way, did his talking on the circuit, delivered a great performance, and he’ll be more than happy with his drive today.
“He just needs to put more emphasis on Saturday. He was in Q3 at the weekend, and again he’ll take confidence from that.
“As soon as he starts qualifying on the first couple of rows, and then he’ll be back in business.”
Perez conceded a day like Sunday will undoubtedly help his cause.
“From now on, I just look forward to basically being on the podium every single weekend,” said Perez. “So let’s keep it up.”
The drive certainly appeared to be one from the Perez of old, and who won two of the first four races to potentially suggest he could rival Verstappen for this year’s drivers’ title, since when the wheels have fallen off his charge.
Perez’s cause was not helped by starting on the hard tyre, but he ultimately went on to make his strategy work, although with another lap or two, it is likely he would have been caught and passed by Hamilton.
“The race was good, but very tough, especially starting on the hard compound,” said Perez. “It felt very low grip initially.
“But just to follow around and to overtake, there were times where we basically had one line because offline there was a lot of rubber and we were damaging the tyres a lot.
“So it was not easy to overtake, and as usual, it’s a track that is very difficult to overtake at, but I think we might we managed to execute a good strategy.
“I also knew I had to maximise my weekend, to try to get the biggest amount of points possible. I was looking forward to getting onto the podium, so I knew I had to do some overtaking.”
