Sergio Perez’s last race for Red Bull? He calls Belgian GP “disappointing”

Sergio Perez admitted his F1 Belgian Grand Prix - which might end up being his final Red Bull race - was “disappointing”.

Red Bull’s Helmut Marko insisted that the team will sit down on Monday, the start of the F1 summer break, and considering Perez's worthiness to continue in the car will inevitably crop up.

His impressive Saturday - he qualified on the front row due to Max Verstappen's grid penalty - petered out at Spa on Sunday as he slipped to an eighth-placed finish. He was later upgraded to P7 due to George Russell's disqualification.

Teammate Verstappen, who started 11th, finished fifth (upgraded to fourth).

“I had a good qualifying, a good day,” Perez reacted after the Belgian Grand Prix, where Crash.net are in the paddock.

“It doesn't change anything,” he insisted about his status within Red Bull.

“I think we have too much going on in the team, a lot of things that we have to focus on, and we cannot waste any energy with all this speculation.

“So this is the last time I will speak about the future, just to make it clear for everyone, I will not be speaking anymore, I will not answer any more questions about the future.”

Perez batted off a second question about whether he will be axed midseason by Red Bull.

He then said about a disappointing pair of rounds, over the past two weekends, for Red Bull: “There are plenty of things that we need to analyse.

“But I think Mercedes was very impressive. We couldn't match the Ferraris either, so we have plenty of stuff to understand.”

Perez said about his Sunday at Spa: “It was a very disappointing race. It started well, I have to say.

“I was just struggling a lot on the straights. I don't know what was going on, but I had to save battery early on in the first couple of laps.

“I was just very weak on the straights. And once I managed to clear it, charge the pack a bit, I was pretty much the same as Lewis and Charles, I was staying there.

“But then the second stint, jumping onto the new tyre with all the traffic behind, it just made it really, really difficult, very tricky.

“We did quite a short stint as well, so we were just out of sync, I think we were just not good with tyres today. Balance wasn't there as well, so, yeah, plenty of things to analyse.”

He added: “We were obviously very compromised by having just two sets of mediums.

“So, again, I think strategically it wasn't a perfect exhibition. It's something that we will get together as a team.”