"Extremely unlikely" Lawson will substitute Perez this yr

Purple Bull workforce principal Christian Horner performed down, however didn’t rule out, the opportunity of Liam Lawson changing Sergio Perez on the workforce this yr.

Perez failed to attain for the fifth time this season in Mexico. Purple Bull have been main the constructors’ championship 5 races in the past however fell to 3rd final weekend.

Purple Bull dropped Daniel Ricciardo from their second workforce RB two rounds in the past, changing him with Lawson, who impressed throughout a five-race spell as an alternative to the workforce final yr. Lawson scored factors on his return in Austin.

Perez endured a conspicuously poor weekend in his house race. He did not progress past Q1 and was penalised for a false begin earlier than damaging his automobile in an incident with Lawson.

However with simply 4 races left this season, Horner indicated he doesn’t envisage changing Perez with Lawson. “I believe it’s extremely, extremely unlikely,” he informed Viaplay. “We’ll sit down and look and attempt to perceive what occurred on this race.”

Nonetheless he admitted Perez had a poor race in entrance of his house crowd. “He picked up various harm and his race was shot at that time,” stated Horner. “He picked up a penalty for the beginning. So positively a race to neglect.”

Perez laid the blame for his poor race at Lawson’s ft. “It was very unlucky as a result of we have been making a variety of progress,” he stated. “We have been positively getting into the appropriate path.

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“We have been as much as P10 already, though with the penalty we had at first. It was trying like good factors for the day to minimise the harm however then sadly we got here along with Lawson and we picked up a large harm.”

Whereas Perez blamed Lawson for his or her collision, the stewards solely investigated the Purple Bull driver for the incident. They cleared him, however Perez believed Lawson ought to have been penalised.

“To me it’s easy,” stated Perez. “He was off the observe. I used to be on the within into flip 4 and the one route he had was to chop the nook and go straight, simply principally like if there was nobody there. That meant that we broken the each of our races.”

The stewards dominated Perez made a late transfer which compelled Lawson off the observe. “It’s not his fault, he’s developing and he’s simply driving with out management,” Perez continued. “He did the identical to Fernando final weekend, he’s executed it to me, he’s executed it to Franco on the finish of the race and there’s no penalty. So it actually relies upon who you might be right here and to see what kind of penalties you get.”

Perez stated he gained’t “waste my time” making an attempt to speak to Lawson about their conflict: “He doesn’t perceive something.”