Sergio Perez is adamant that he will continue to partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull next season.

To be perfectly blunt, the reason the Austrian team, which last week secured its fourth successive drivers' title with Verstappen, is looking to finish third in the team standings, can be laid squarely at the Mexican's door.

He has 152 points to his teammate's 403 and is currently eighth in the standings, safe in the knowledge that he cannot be overhauled.

His last podium was in China and he has scored just 21 points since the summer break, compared to Verstappen's 126. Even his qualifying has gone to pot, failing to make it to Q3 at four of the last five outings.

Yet, talking to reporters in Qatar, the Mexican is adamant that he will retain his seat.

Asked on Thursday in Qatar, if he was 100% certain that he would be retained by Red Bull Racing, and not moved to RB, the Mexican said: "Yeah, exactly."

Asked about his contract he added: "I don't speak. I've been 14 years in the sport and I don't speak about my contracts publicly. So I will not comment on that. I know exactly where I am and I will not speak about it publicly."

At the start of the year he appeared to be battling with Verstappen for the title, so where has it all gone wrong?

"I think it's very difficult for people to understand that they're not part of the team or are not on a daily basis," he said. "From one race to another, let's say you are so far away. I think when you are not able to extract 100% out of your car, it's irrelevant how good your car is. And this is what happened.

"You know, I haven't been able to extract 100% out of my car because of the difficulties I've had in the last few months with it. And I think that's the main issue. I think you go through periods and I think as a team, we are understanding and we're working really hard to make sure that we can fix them."

Asked if he feels therefore that the basic stats are misleading, the Mexican said: "At the end of the day, the team has all the information. There is so much I can say here. At the end of the day, the team has all the information. And there's a reason why we extended my contract during the year. At the end of the day, the team has everything, and we exactly know where we are in terms of performance, in terms of issues, difficulties that we've had.

"We are a team and we know exactly internally where everything stands, so we're working really hard as a team to come through and get back into a much better season than the one that we just had.

"I think Max has done his best season I've seen from him in these four years," he added. "I think the way he pushed the team, out of the car, how hard he worked during this year, especially there were a lot of periods during the year where we looked really far and he would push the team in all the areas, in all the aspects. Max has done very big steps out of the car. I think his talent and his speed has been there since day one, but out of the car, how he reads the races, how he works with the team, how he pushes the team, I think is the biggest step that he has done in these past years.

"I think we're working as a team," he continued. "I think especially the last few months, we've had similar issues with the car, so we're pushing in similar directions to try and improve the car.

"At the end of the day, we are working as a team. Like I say, you know, the team knows exactly what we've done, where we are, and I think we're working well together."

While he claims that the stats don't tell the whole story, the fact is that Red Bull is destined to finish third behind McLaren and Ferrari, not only a poor result for the team that scored a fourth successive drivers' title but also worth many millions in prize money.

While we do not go along with some of the conspiracy theories doing the rounds, the fact is that having failed so miserably in the second half of the season, if Perez is retained for another year there would have to be something more to the story.