Horner stresses: 'Perez is still under pressure, contract or not'

Ever since the Imola Grand Prix, shortly after the announcement of his new contract, Perez has been performing disappointingly. After a string of poor results, the Red Bull driver has fallen back in the standings from second to fifth place. So far in the Formula 1 weekend in Austria too, he has failed to convince.

Perez closed qualifying with an eighth time, more than eight tenths behind teammate and pole-sitter Max Verstappen. According to Horner, however, there was an explanation for the Mexican's disappointing result. "He used up all his tyres getting to Q3, so getting to Q3, and it's such fine margins here," Horner began in conversation with Sky Sports.

"But having used all four sets to get to Q3, it was always going to be very limited, what he could do there. But we're still surprisingly close to the cars with new tyres ahead with Ferrari and one of the Mercedes, so I think he'll race better tomorrow. I think we've got a good strategy. We've got two sets of hards available to us, which, if it's super hot, like it's been the last couple of days, could be quite handy," he added.

Horner defends Perez, but: 'The pressure remains'

Asked about the big difference in performance with Verstappen, Horner replies, "We're doing our best to support him and to find out what it is that's missing, because the first four or five races were very competitive and whatever's happened that's caused him to drop off in Suzuka. He was a tenth of a second off Max here in nine corners, the gap is obviously significantly greater. We just need to get to the bottom of it and help him recover.

The Red Bull team boss remains squarely behind Perez, but seems to hint that Red Bull still has opportunities to put pressure on the Mexican. "Checo's position within the team, what he's contributed to the team warranted that. But of course, there's always pressure to perform, and that is irrelevant of contracts, which we're obviously never going to go into the detail of," Horner said somewhat cryptically.

"Checo knows it's a pressure business and he knows the scrutiny that there is, particularly in a car that's winning a lot of races and performing with the other driver the way it is. So that's Formula One, and that pressure just naturally exists on any teammate that is under delivering. The media start asking questions, and it's very easy to lose your head at that. Now, what I've been impressed with Checo over the last four years is that whenever the pressure's really been on and it's on at the moment, he's always been able to bounce back, and he's going to need to dig deep to do that."