Perez says pressure to perform comes from himself, not Red Bull

Perez has endured a tricky start to life at Red Bull and despite showing glimpses of his potential - such as qualifying an excellent P2 on the grid in just his second race at Imola - he has so far been unable to figure in the battle for the podium places.

After the Mexican finished a distant fifth in the Spanish Grand Prix last time out, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said his side “desperately need” Perez to join the fight against Mercedes and aid teammate Max Verstappen’s title bid.

But Perez stressed that any pressure to deliver results is coming from himself, rather than the team.

“All the pressure is coming from myself,” Perez said. “I really want to deliver to the maximum car potential, to where the team is operating at.

"The team hasn’t put any pressure on me, I know what kind of job I have to do, so they don’t have to tell me what to do.

“The responsibility is with myself, it’s to deliver to my maximum. It’s not mainly to help Max, it’s to deliver, to be in the fight where the car needs to be.

“It’s as simple as that. I have to be where the car deserves to be and I wasn't able to do that last weekend.”

Perez believes this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix could be very important for the rest of his season if he is able to make a breakthrough and get comfortable with the RB16B.

“You need that confidence with your car in Monaco,” he explained.

“So if I’m able to build that throughout the weekend and really feel at one with the car then it will be very good for the rest of the season. If you are able to get that confidence in Monaco then you can get it anywhere else.

“So it’s a very important weekend for me in that regard to be able to build and get that confidence with the car - which I don’t have just now - and hopefully we can do a very good weekend here.”

Perez has one previous podium finish at Monaco from his Force India days in 2016 and said repeating that achievement this weekend would mean a lot to him.

“It would mean a lot because it would be my first podium with with Red Bull,” he added.

“So I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully we are able to put a great race together and finally get into into those positions and start to reduce the gap to the leaders.”