Max Verstappen has remained tight-lipped on Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez and his Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying failure.
Perez crashed heavily in Q1 at a damp Hungaroring as a poor run of form continues, in which he has scored just 11 points since Imola, suffering Q1 exits in four of the last five races.
Red Bull chiefs are upping the pressure on Perez, with the Mexican needed to score his fair share of points to aid in the constructors' fight against McLaren, with motorsport advisor Helmut Marko indicating that further talks will be held after the Belgian Grand Prix next weekend - the start of the summer break.
Verstappen qualified third at the Hungaroring behind the McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, but could not be drawn when questioned about Perez's failure.
"I don't think we need to go into too much detail about that," Verstappen told media including RacingNews365.
"It is just a shame for Checo himself that it happened in Q1, because up until that point, he was actually having quite a decent weekend.
"It is just very unfortunate and that is the only thing I want to say about that."
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Red Bull's RB20 upgrade
Verstappen also reiterated that he felt Red Bull needed to up its game having seen its performance advantage eradicated over recent races.
He is sporting the big bodywork upgrades to the RB20, with the team keen to bring the new parts in a bid to arrest the slide.
However, the McLaren MCL38, with no upgrades, has proved the fastest car throughout the Budapest weekend, with Verstappen acknowledging that it is "not easy" to find performance.
"It's been like that already for a while, so we are well aware of that, and we are pushing as hard as we can, but clearly at the moment it's still not how we want it to be," he noted.
"We'll continue to do so. We'll try to find more performance, but I'm also well aware that that's not very easy to find suddenly throughout the season, with things already just planned, and just the way the car is.
"But we'll see. I mean, there are many races.
"There are a lot of things that can happen in qualifying with conditions, stuff like that. So we just need to stay focused and do the best we can every single time and optimise our performances."
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