Desperate Red Bull to 'sit down' with Perez after Qatar nightmare

Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner has confirmed he will "sit down" with Sergio Perez and "go back to basics" after another difficult weekend at the Qatar Grand Prix.

The Mexican has struggled with inconsistent form ever since crashing in qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix, though had seemed back on the right path after the summer break, with a second-place finish at Monza.

But following messy events in Singapore and Japan, Perez failed to reach Q3 in Friday's qualifying at the Lusail International Circuit before his weekend was hampered by a crash in the Sprint, albeit he was not to blame.

Subsequent repairs left Perez with a pit lane start, but multiple track limit violations led to 15 seconds' worth of time penalties, with only a point secured for a tenth-place finish.

It represented a missed opportunity for Perez who failed to take advantage of Lewis Hamilton's first-corner retirement in the race for second in the Drivers' standings.

Speaking to media including RacingNews365.com, Horner explained: "I think we really need to sit down with Checo because we know what he's capable of and he's not hitting that form at the moment.

"We desperately need him to find that form to keep this second place in the championship.

"It was frustrating that he's only come out of the weekend with one point and I think he could have, even starting from the back of the grid, there was an opportunity to score heavily today or decently.

"But we'll support him as much as we can because there's the triple-header coming up [United States, Mexico, Brazil]. There's a huge amount of points with sprint races as well."

Full support

Perez started the season in stellar form, winning two of the opening four races as well as the Azerbaijan Sprint to firmly position himself as a title challenger for teammate Max Verstappen.

But with the number of errors creeping into his performances, Horner explained: "I think you just need to sometimes sort of take your foot off, put it on the floor, stop the merry-go-round and just go back to basics and that's what we'll do.

"We all know what Checo is capable of and we want to support him to get back into a position where even as near ago as Monza, he was finishing in second place to Max."