Perez needs to "stop thinking about the championship and just drive" - Horner

Perez was just six points behind Max Verstappen following his victory in April’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix but three races later he finds himself 53 points adrift following a difficult pair of races. 

A crash in qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix left him at the back of the grid and he went on to finish outside of the points. Perez then suffered a Q2 elimination in Barcelona the following weekend but was able to recover to fourth.

However, with teammate Verstappen winning both races, the Mexican has seen his hopes of a title challenge dramatically fade. 

“He had a great start to the season, he’s had a couple of rougher races and he just needs to find that mojo again,” Horner told Sky ahead of qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix. 

“I think actually he needs to stop thinking about the championship and just drive, because we know what he’s capable of - we’ve seen it earlier in the year.

“And just take the pressure off himself. If he just frees his shoulders up a bit, it’ll just come to him more naturally.”

Going into the weekend, Perez had already rejected a suggestion by Horner that he would be feeling less pressure after his recent disappointments. 

Perez was a lowly 17th and nearly three seconds slower than Verstappen in a wet final practice in Montreal as he struggled to generate tyre temperatures. 

Asked what Red Bull can do to help him going into qualifying, Horner answered: “I think just give him the data. He’ll be looking at that now with his engineer in the build up to quali. 

“He never got the tyres into the right temperature window in that second part of the session. At the beginning of the session he was running fine.

“So the time I’m not worried about. I think that will naturally converge. We know that Checo is pretty decent in the wet. 

“What Max seems to be exceptional at, a bit like Fernando, is just generating tyre temp really quickly with an aggressive style and suddenly the car just comes into a window where it works.