Christian Horner’s verdict on Liam Lawson v Sergio Perez skirmish

Christian Horner insists “lessons” will emerge from the battle between Liam Lawson and Sergio Perez.

RB driver Lawson got into a squabble at the F1 Mexico City Grand Prix with Red Bull’s Perez, whose place he could take next year.

Lawson damaged Perez’s sidepod on Lap 19 - then shot him a middle-finger gesture which he later apologised for.

Perez angrily reacted that Lawson did not have the “right attitude” for Formula 1, pointing to his row with Fernando Alonso a week prior.

The Lawson v Perez battle was a rare occasion where Red Bull fought on-track with their sister team.

“First of all I think it demonstrates that the two teams do race each other,” Red Bull boss Horner reacted.

“And whilst having the same ownership are independent in the way that they go racing. 
“Liam has apologised, I think, to Checo for the incident. 
“Obviously they’ll be lessons that come out of that, but frustrating certainly for Checo’s race to pick up the damage and lose valuable points today.

“I haven’t spoken with Liam yet, I’ve spoken to Checo and I understand the two drivers have spoken together.”

The clash with Lawson contributed to another awful weekend for Perez, this time at his home grand prix.

He finished 17th and was hit with a time penalty for incorrectly positioning his car on the grid.

“I think he just positioned the car outside of the box, he just made a mistake and positioned the car too far forward,” Horner said.

“Checo again has had a horrible weekend. Nothing has gone right for him this weekend.

“He knows Formula 1 is a results based business and inevitably when you are not delivering, the spotlight is firmly on you.”

Horner was unable to give guarantees that Perez would stay driving the Red Bull, despite his contract for next year and despite the team’s show of faith in him earlier this season.

Other worries for Horner will be that Red Bull lost second-place in the constructors’ championship to Ferrari.

McLaren and Ferrari have much better race pace than Red Bull in Mexico, Horner admitted.

“That's the biggest thing that we need to take away from today is, more so on the hard tyre we just didn't have the same pace,” he said.

“Max just had no grip. We didn't feel like we could switch the tyres on.

“So that's the biggest challenge in the next four days, is to understand what caused that? 
“And obviously Brazil is a very different challenge to this circuit, but it's a pattern that particularly at the end of the stints, you see the McLaren is very, very strong, particularly at the end of grands prix.”