{"id":351677,"date":"2023-12-05T03:40:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-05T04:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=351677"},"modified":"2023-12-05T05:03:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T05:03:00","slug":"i-cannot-be-this-bad-f1-stars-desperate-act-amid-slump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=351677","title":{"rendered":"'I cannot be this bad': F1 star's desperate act amid slump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sergio Perez<\/a> says his 'worst weekend ever in the sport' triggered a timely brainstorming session to get his Formula 1<\/a> season back on track.<\/p>\n

The Red Bull Racing<\/a> driver was a bona fide front-runner at the beginning of the season, winning two of the first four races.<\/p>\n

They would be his only victories in a season that was otherwise plagued by bad luck and mistakes, but mostly lacklustre pace relative to his all-dominant teammate Max Verstappen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Verstappen won 19 of the 22 races this year. Despite being in equal machinery, Perez was only runner-up on four occasions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the Dutch driver enjoyed the fruits of one of the most dominant cars in modern history, his Mexican teammate languished.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sergio<\/p>\n

It reached an all-time low when he crashed out of the sprint race in Qatar and wound up 10th in the subsequent grand prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The results in Singapore and Japan were nothing to write home about either. He was eighth at Marina Bay and failed to finish at Suzuka after he collided with Haas' Kevin Magnussen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked why Qatar was the catalyst for a brainstorming session, Perez told reporters, "Because Qatar was really the worst weekend I remember in a while, probably my worst weekend ever in the sport.<\/p>\n

"It was such a bad weekend that I really felt like: 'I cannot be this bad, there's something that's going on'.<\/p>\n

\"Sergio<\/p>\n

"When you have these back-to-back races, I feel like sometimes there is not enough time to really go through it all. So, I felt like we really had to take a bit of time to make sure that we understood which way we were going.<\/p>\n

"Obviously, we had a deficit within the car setup that we were playing around [with] weekend by weekend and we were just not able to progress through it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

"But once we managed to get on top of that, we understood a lot of things that we were trying to compensate for. And that just basically meant that we were not just not doing things right.<\/p>\n

"I think that has been really, really good on our side. I mean, it was bad that it happened but in a way, it was really good because it really strengthened our team quite a lot."<\/p>\n

\"'That\u2019s<\/p>\n

Perez admitted mental resilience was something he had to work on after such a strong start to the season.<\/p>\n

He announced himself as a title challenger, something that evidently irked higher-ups after a tweet in which he wrote "I want to be champion" was deleted and then reposted with the aforementioned line removed.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, he suffered the first of several slumps when he crashed out of qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

"I had some really difficult times in a few months, let's put it that way," said Perez.<\/p>\n

"I went from fighting from the championship to being in a difficult boat, and not having that confidence with the car.<\/p>\n

"But the end of the day, if you want to be at Red Bull, I'm aware of how strong mentally you have to be to be here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

"And it's something that I got stronger at. You learn so much from the bad days, much more than from the good days."<\/p>\n

Perez was continually subject to rumours of his impending demise at Red Bull.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Daniel Ricciardo loomed as a serious threat<\/a> until he broke his hand in practice<\/a> at the Dutch Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Even so, Perez said he didn't consider an early exit from his contract which is set to conclude at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

\"Sergio<\/p>\n

"Obviously, that would have been the easiest route because it was very tough at times," he explained.<\/p>\n

"But I'm not the type of guy that at this stage of my career will be giving up and be willing to finish my career like that. It's not something that I ever considered doing.<\/p>\n

"I'm aware of the responsibility I have and I'm not the sort of guy that will blame people around me for the results.\u00a0<\/p>\n

"At the end of the day I took responsibility for it and I had to turn around the situation quite a lot."<\/p>\n

After Qatar, Perez finished no lower than fifth barring the Mexico City Grand Prix in which he crashed out in the first turn.<\/p>\n

In the penultimate race of the season, Perez broke a seven-race podium drought with third place in Las Vegas before taking fourth in the finale at Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old ended the season in second while Verstappen scored more than twice as many points for his third straight title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sergio Perez says his 'worst weekend ever in the sport' triggered a timely brainstorming session to get his Formula 1 season back on track. The […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":351680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=351677"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351688,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351677\/revisions\/351688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/351680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=351677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=351677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=351677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}