Sergio Perez assured he would be leading the championship over Max Verstappen if not for Australian GP “issues”
Sergio Perez crashed out on his first run in Australian GP qualifying. Without this, he thinks he would be leading the championship ahead of Max Verstappen.
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Sergio Perez (L) | Max Verstappen (R)
Sergio Perez won his second race of the season in Baku. In the process, he also became the only man to win an F1 event in Baku, twice. And most would agree that the win is very impressive, and almost completely achieved on merit. The Mexican driver has started the season very well and is just 6 points off Max Verstappen now. But this gap could have been smaller, or perhaps the gap in the opposite direction!
As it is, he is still in a very good position right now. He has proven in mettle against Verstappen – mostly without circumstances intervening, and of course, won two races. Many consider him to be the ‘second driver’ at Red Bull, but he has certainly been proving his credentials better, at least on street circuits. And his aim is to win the championship – not just win races.
When quizzed by Sky Sports on how much he believes in his title chances, the Mexican replied: “I think, having three kids at home, I wouldn’t be travelling around the world if I didn’t believe that I can be a world champion. I’m working towards that, but obviously there is so much you can talk [about] outside the car, and I think it’s important to deliver on the track.”
He feels that without his issues in Melbourne – with the qualifying moment, and starting from the pitlane, he ‘should’ have been leading the championship. The Red Bull man said: “I think without the issues we had in qualifying in Melbourne, we should be leading the championship, so definitely there is everything to believe we can do well this year.” It was quite a tough weekend for Perez, but he still weathered the storm to grab a P5, which was impressive considering the circumstances.
Sergio Perez claims to have a “great relationship” with Max Verstappen
Much has been made of tension between Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen. This picked up considerable, and really all its steam from the Sao Paulo Grand Prix last season. There, the Dutchman – who had already won the championship – defied team orders to let Perez through. The latter was fighting for P2, and he eventually lost out on that, though not necessarily cause of this moment. Till then, it has been assumed that their relationship has ‘calmed’.
But, according to Perez: “I think, to be honest, it’s a great relationship between Max and myself. Although not many people believe [it], we are very similar. We have a life out of the sport and when we are home we pretty much disconnect from it. When we are on track, we come, try to do the best possible job, we try to beat each other… I’m sure Max will look at my data, I will look at his, and we’re just pushing each other massively. I think this year is about not making those mistakes.”
It’ll be interesting to see how it goes for Perez in 2023. He’s certainly started off strong, but by and large, Verstappen has had the measure of him during their time as teammates. Red Bull have proclaimed that the two are free to fight. It’s rather hard to see any other team compete with the utter dominance of the Red Bull RB19 right now. So, it looks as if 2023 will feature an inter-teammate title fight.
In case you missed it:
- Helmut Marko claims Max Verstappen was ‘lucky’ not to end up in the wall at Baku while praising Sergio Perez
- Max Verstappen or Sergio Perez? Supercomputer predicts the 2023 F1 world champion
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)