Red Bull Racing is set to keep Sergio Perez in one of it’s F1 race seats after speculation he was set to be dropped during the season’s summer break.

Despite the Mexican only signing a new contract with Red Bull last month, speculation had built up that the team were considering dropping Perez from his seat alongside Max Verstappen.

Perez has seen a slump in form, with the 34-year-old failing to score a podium in the last 10 races and not finishing a race higher than seventh since the Miami Grand Prix in early May.

The drop in form has seen the driver fall to seventh in the F1 Driver’s Championship standings, which would have been eighth had George Russell not been disqualified after winning last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.

The form has also seen Red Bull become vulnerable in the Constructor’s Championship. The Milton Keynes-based team enter the summer break still leading but are now 42 points clear of McLaren, having been over 100 points clear in May and having been outscored by McLaren and Mercedes in the last 2 months.

It was widely reported that Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner and motorsport advisor Dr Helmut Marko were planning to meet to review the first half of the season on Monday the day after the Belgian Grand Prix, with one item of review being whether to keep Perez in his seat for when the F1 season resumes after the summer break at the Dutch Grand Prix in late August.

Internal remarks by Horner that were reported by Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and verified by multiple outlets including the BBC, Sky, The Race, RaceFans and Autosport suggests that the team have made the decision to retain Perez for at least the next four races in the Netherlands, Italy, Azerbaijan and Singapore.

Horner is quoted as saying, “Checo remains a Red Bull Racing driver, despite all the speculation of late. We look forward to seeing him perform on circuits where he has done well before.”

The decision will also see Red Bull’s junior team RB maintain its current line-up, with Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda remaining there and reserve driver Liam Lawson remaining in reserve. Ricciardo and Lawson had been rumoured at various points over the last month as being linked with taking Perez’s seat.

Multiple criticisms of Perez’s form had emerged from Red Bull in recent weeks, with Horner calling Perez’s form “unsustainable” in a TV interview after he failed to score points at the British Grand Prix and Marko saying Perez “completely collapsed” in his own TV interview after the Belgian round when he went from starting second to finishing eighth, before being promoted to seventh after Russell’s disqualification.