A poor display during FP1 at Monza on Friday was an indicator of Sergio Perez having "lost his way" at Red Bull, according to Martin Brundle.
Earlier in the season the Mexican was considered to be a bona-fide championship contender. That opinion was especially common after the Monaco Grand Prix, as his victory there left him just 15 points off the pace of team-mate Max Verstappen in the title race.
Since then though he has comfortably been second best to the Dutchman. While Verstappen has been dominant, Perez has struggled for form and consistency, which has seen him slip to 109 points behind and almost certainly out of title contention.
His problems were indicated during the first practice session ahead of this weekend's Italian Grand Prix. While less importance is attached to lap times in practice, the fact he was more than a second slower than Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and eight-tenths off his team-mate was a cause for concern.
Speaking live on Sky Sports F1, former racer Brundle dismissed the idea that a DRS issue had affected Perez and suggested the problems run a lot deeper than that. "You could see [the DRS] oscillating on a Red Bull. It can't be helped with the downforce but you don't need a whole lot of downforce there," he said.
"What you don't need either is a whole load of drag, so if it's creating drag then it's slowing it down. Sergio has definitely lost his way a little bit with the Red Bull car at the moment."
He went on to suggest Red Bull are struggling to figure out the Mexican's problem. "I'm sure if he knew, they'd sort it out very quickly," Brundle added.
"But it just doesn't seem to play to his strengths behind the wheel and then you lose a bit of confidence and trust on the braking point. And with these latest Formula 1 cars and the speed you take through these corners, if it starts sliding around too much, particularly at the rear end, and you don't hustle it then you lose a bit of tyre temperature and a bit of brake temperature.
"Then you get to a point where the car slides and you tighten up because, 'oh no, the car is sliding' rather than being just 'whatever, I can handle whatever you throw at me'. It's a snowball effect of tiny little things and that's why it's hard to identify what has gone wrong and how to put it right."
