Sergio Perez reveals his true feelings about Max Verstappen’s dominant 2023 season

Perez took his sixth podium of the season in Belgium while Verstappen celebrated his eighth consecutive victory

Sergio Perez reveals his true feelings about Max Verstappen’s dominant 2023 season

Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez (Credits: Formula Nerds)

While Max Verstappen has been on a red-hot streak of victories, his teammate Sergio Perez has struggled to find his form. Although he finished P3 in Hungary and P2 in Belgium, the Mexican was still 22 seconds behind Verstappen in Belgium when they finished. Perez recently talked about how he felt about Verstappen’s dominance before going into the summer break.

Sergio Perez had nothing but praise for his teammate. Apart from his overall performance from the first half of the season, he praised Verstappen’s impressive comeback from P6 in Belgium, saying that he and his team are very consistent with their results.

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“There’s nothing to be taken away from Max, certainly. He did a tremendous a race, and he’s done a tremendous season. He’s very talented; around his team, they’re getting the maximum out of the weekends, weekend after weekend, which is really impressive,” Perez is quoted by Formula1.com.

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Sergio Perez explains the massive gap between him and Max Verstappen in Belgium

Sergio Perez
Sergio Perez (Credits: News18)

Sergio Perez had started on P3 in Belgium, three places ahead of Verstappen on P6, serving a gearbox change penalty. With Perez’s form in question, this could have been the perfect opportunity for him to win his first grand prix since Azerbaijan. But, it didn’t take Verstappen longer than 17 laps to get ahead of Perez, eventually amassing a lead of 22 seconds by the end of the race.

Perez was asked if he thought at some point that he could take the win. Perez explained that after Verstappen overtook him, his task was to ensure that Red Bull finished P1 and P2. He said that due to only one practice session, they were not entirely sure about the car and were just aiming to bring it back in one piece.

“Especially on that second stint he pulled away, good gap. So from that point onwards it was all about making sure that we brought it home, because we were a bit too aggressive with the car setup, you know not having any practice,” Perez told Sky F1.

Perez was also asked whether he’d be able to give Verstappen more of a challenge after the break. He was optimistic about the thought, saying that they have the summer break to figure things out. He said, “We have this summer break to make sure we get on top of things. We have a bit of time and hopefully, we are able to find something that can bring us to the form we had earlier in the season.”

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