Pressure mounting on Perez after another blank weekend

LONDON : Sergio Perez is under more pressure than ever at Formula One champions Red Bull after the Mexican failed to score any points for the third weekend in five races.

Perez, overall runner-up last year to team mate Max Verstappen, has taken only 15 points from his last six races and has fallen to sixth in the championship at the halfway point of the season.

"Of course he's under pressure. That's normal in Formula One and when you're under-delivering that pressure only mounts," team boss Christian Horner said after Perez started from the pitlane in Sunday's British Grand Prix and finished 17th.

Triple world champion Verstappen, winner of seven races this year and now 84 points clear of McLaren's Lando Norris, was second.

Perez's blank meant resurgent McLaren outscored Red Bull for the fifth time in six races, a rate that could bring that team into the title reckoning.

McLaren boss Zak Brown said last Saturday that Perez's continued under-performance could be a key factor in the championship.

Horner said nothing had gone the Mexican's way at Silverstone, starting with his spin into the gravel in qualifying that had the team boss shaking his head on the pitwall.

"We took a gamble in the race, he started on the hard tyre and was making decent progress early on in the race, the rain started to arrive he was P15 or 16 at the time, you roll the dice a little at that point," Horner said.

"He went on to the inter, if the rain had picked up he'd have looked a hero. It didn't, so you don't.

"Then he had an extra stop and the time loss of being on an inter on a drying track was haemhorraging a lot of time for him. So yeah, obviously a lot to look at from over the weekend.

"He knows it's unsustainable to not be scoring points," added the