Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko has denied reports that Liberty Media intervened to pressure Red Bull Racing to retain Sergio Perez for commercial reasons.

The Mexican’s future in F1 has been put in jeopardy as the sport heads into the summer break, with Red Bull looking to replace the 34-year-old F1 veteran due to a lack of performance and results.

Perez currently sits 146 points behind Red Bull teammate and championship leader Max Verstappen, a significant gap that could have an impact on the Milton Keynes-based outfit’s battle for F1’s Constructors’ standings.

Red Bull still leads the constructors’ championship, but the gap to second-placed McLaren has narrowed to 42 points.

After Red Bull decided not to change its squad after the Belgian Grand Prix despite Perez having a disappointing race at Spa-Francorchamps, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has reportedly asked Red Bull to keep Perez on the team in order to protect ticket sales for next October’s Mexican Grand Prix.

However, Marko immediately denied these reports.

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“Reports of Liberty Media’s continued commitment to race in Mexico are untrue,” Marko wrote in his regular column Speed ​​week.

“Of course they want him to race at home, but our choice of driver is not based on Liberty Media’s intentions.”

Despite Marko acknowledging Perez’s poor performances and inconsistencies, the Austrian believes the troubled driver remains Red Bull’s best option for the second half of F1’s current season.

“Sergio will continue to drive the Red Bull Racing car after the summer break. There are races on the tracks where he was good last year and we trust in his consistency,” he said.

“He has shown some good performances at times and on the last race weekend in Spa he was very fast on Saturday (in qualifying) and finished third.

“He was allowed to start from second place and according to the calculations, third place would have been possible.

“But we saw that his tyres were deteriorating significantly more. He was not pushing hard and on top of that, we only had two sets of mediums and one set of hard compound, whereas the competitors had two sets of hards and one set of mediums. Maybe that was the deciding factor.

“Pérez doesn’t need to be faster, he just needs to be more consistent. And considering the alternatives, he is still our best solution.”

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