Sergio Perez was told to "concentrate more on racing" as Helmut Marko gave a blunt assessment of the Mexican's situation.
After the first five races of the year, Perez was only 14 points behind Max Verstappen and was doing a good job of keeping up with his Red Bull team-mate. But the last two Formula 1 race weekends have brought little other than disappointment for him.
His crash in qualifying meant he started at the back in Monaco and was unable to progress to the points position. Perez needed to make up for it last weekend in Spain but was consigned to 11th on the grid and reached only fourth in the race.
The gap to Verstappen now stands at 53 points and, based on the Dutchman's current form, looks likely to widen. If Perez still has any chance of beating his team-mate to the title, Red Bull adviser Marko believes a switch of mindset is required.
He told Sky Germany: "With Sergio, things have not been going well since Monte Carlo. He needs to concentrate more on racing, not on the title. I hope he recovers himself. The whole weekend it was already the case that he was three-to-five-tenths slower.
"It's now the second consecutive weekend [with problems]. That's a different situation and he believed in his world championship dream. Checo is getting a relatively hard wake-up call now, but I'm sure he'll pick himself up again."
Speaking to team boss Christian Horner after the race, Nico Rosberg criticised Perez's "lack of performance". But Horner stood up for his driver as he snapped back at the Sky Sports pundit.
He replied: "You're a critical kind of guy, aren't you? You're tough on these guys. Now you're out of the car you have to criticise all the guys.
"I think that he [Perez] lost out in the early laps and didn't have a great start. George [Russell] managed to get away with running off the track and not getting any penalty for that and I think that was the difference at the end of the day."
