After keeping up with Max Verstappen in the early races Perez started struggling to adapt to the tweaked Red Bull RB19 from June's Spanish Grand Prix onwards, with the Mexican admitting to getting "lost" on how he has to set up the car to extract its optimal performance.
During his travails, he frequently struggled to qualify in the top 10 and fell down what he called a "really deep" hole in Qatar, where he finished 80 seconds down on his dominant team-mate.
