Christian Horner losing patience with Sergio Perez: "Difficult decisions have to be made"

Christian Horner is losing patience with Sergio Perez after his nightmare Mexico City Grand Prix, warning “difficult decisions have to be made”.

Perez endured a shocking race on home soil at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

He was knocked out in Q1 after struggling with the handling of his RB20 amid an alleged ongoing braking issue.

On race day, he was hit with a penalty for a false start before sustaining damage after an incident with RB driver Liam Lawson.

Red Bull now sit third in the drivers’ championship, while Max Verstappen’s lead has been reduced to 47 points with four rounds to go.

Speaking to media including Crash.net in Mexico on Sunday, Horner refused to rule out replacing Perez following the race in Brazil next weekend when directly asked if he would see out the season.

“Look, as I just said, that scrutiny is always going to be there,” he responded.

“There comes a point in time that difficult decisions have to be made. We're now third in the constructors' championship.

“Our determination is to try and get back into a winning position, but it's going to be a tall order over these next four races.

“Formula 1 is a results based business and when anyone is underperforming of course there is always going to become scrutiny on that

“As a team we need to have both cars scoring points. That is the nature of Formula 1.”

Horner’s lack of faith in Perez appears to be more apparent now, stating Red Bull have done “everything” they can do to assist him to re-find his early season form and that the team “can only do so much”.

“From the team’s perspective we are working with him as hard as we can to try and support him,” he added. “We’ve done everything that we can and we’ll continue to do so in Brazil next weekend, but there comes a point in time that you can only do so much.”