Sergio Perez insists Red Bull’s recent performance slide is no real surprise from his perspective.
The Mexican headed into the recent summer break amid raging speculation that the team would cancel his newly-signed 2025 and 2026 contract, due to poor performance.
Former double world champion Mika Hakkinen is among those who think Red Bull should have dropped him.
"He was not able to deliver for Red Bull, and it has influenced the success," said the Finn. "This has been a very negative thing.
"He has been there a long time. He had the chance to study himself, to understand himself, what does he need to be number 1. And he has failed to do that."
Red Bull, however, ultimately decided to retain Perez, but perhaps only because Max Verstappen had also begun to seriously struggle at the wheel of the 2024 car.
"The priority of course is that Max wins the drivers’ championship," Dr Helmut Marko told Osterreich newspaper. "But Checo is not bad, he’s just slower."
The gap between Perez and Verstappen, however, looked much smaller at Monza - Verstappen’s sixth consecutive failure to win a grand prix lately.
Perez insists the smaller gap was no personal consolation.
"No, I wish the gap was bigger and that Max was winning because at the end that will only help the team in the constructors’ championship especially," said the 34-year-old.
"We’ve got a lot of work to do to fix this issue and hopefully the next few races can be better for us."
Perez does, however, sound somewhat vindicated by Verstappen’s new struggle with the car.
"I feel like I’m in the same situation as the last eight or ten races," he said. "Only, all of a sudden, Max is having similar problems to me.
"Sure, there’s a bit of confusion, but it’s also quite clear what the problem is by looking at the data collected on the track."
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff agrees that Red Bull should not be written off.
"Who am I to say something like that?" he said. "We had two years in which nothing worked. And it was the same at Ferrari a few races ago. I don’t think we should write them off.
"They are a formidable team," Wolff added, "and I am sure they will have better races in the future."
Nonetheless, Wolff thinks McLaren is currently the favourite to overtake Red Bull and win the constructors’ title this year. "They have two drivers who reliably score points," he said. "I bet Red Bull would not have expected that at the beginning of the year."
As for Perez, he is currently signed up for 2025 and 2026 - and is not yet committing to wanting to extend his Formula 1 career beyond that.
"I know that I’m towards the end of my career, because I don’t want to do it for too long," he told the Times newspaper. "There will be a time, I don’t know when, where I will just have to say, ’Look, I cannot live anymore with leaving my family behind all the time.
"I want to end my career here," Perez added, referring to Red Bull. "I don’t know when, but it’s a team that has given me everything, and I want to give everything back to them as well. Before that, hopefully we are able to win a few more championships."
As for the team’s current fall from dominance, Perez says Red Bull is well aware that the main problem is restoring "balance" to the car’s handling.
"If we can find a solution to these problems, we can turn things around," he said. "For now, we have to keep our heads down until we find an answer."