Christian Horner has branded Saturday at the Australian Grand Prix as "horrible" for the Mexican, who suffered numerous offs in morning practice and crashed out of qualifying. Perez suspected that there was a problem with the braking in his RB19, after he struggled to stop properly on one of his timed laps during the first part of qualifying into Turn 5. After skating across the gravel trap the Mexican became stuck as the car dug into the ground, forcing him to retire from the session and start from the back of the grid for the Grand Prix. Horner believes Perez never recovered from the issues that plagued him during the third practice session earlier in the day. "He's had a horrible day today," Horner told Sky Sports . "It started this morning, the car was late off the weight bridge, there was no major issues and his plan in FP3 was always to run differently to Max - not do a long run, he was just doing two short runs. "He never really recovered from that FP3 and then this [qualifying] lap, which was never going to be a really consequential lap, unfortunately he locked up and went off."
Red Bull checking all data on Perez's car
Suggestions from Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko suggested that the FP3 issue was related to the engine braking in the power unit, which was causing Perez to run deep under braking zones. Horner says the team is checking the data over before they draw to any conclusions, but admits that the problem could be "something within the engine" which caused the problems. "We're just checking all the data to see if there's something within the engine management that is maybe contributed to that [issue]," said Horner.
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