Sergio Pérez looks back on his four years at Red Bull Racing with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the Mexican is grateful for the opportunity he was given by the Austrian racing team, but on the other hand, he often played second fiddle as Max Verstappen’s teammate and regularly became the main target.
In the CRACKSpodcast, he looks back on his time at Red Bull Racing, and therefore also on his period alongside Verstappen. When asked if there is a lot to learn from the four-time world champion, he responds firmly: “Yes, a lot. Max is extremely strong mentally. He has enormous self-confidence and an impressive talent. He is completely focused on the sport, on the races, on being the best driver, and he is a great strength for the team.”
“He drives the team forward very hard. He is a great leader within the team.” Yet he also has some caveats, such as the character of Verstappen: “When things go wrong, he has a lot of difficulty with it. Take Barcelona as an example. He shot. But I think that if he had not done that, he would not be Max either.”
That moment in Brazil
He then looks back on the 2022 season, and especially the Brazilian Grand Prix. Verstappen was already champion and refused to give up his sixth place to Pérez, which would help the Mexican in his battle for P2. At the time, Verstappen announced over the on-board radio that he had ‘his reasons’ for not doing so, probably because he believed Pérez deliberately crashed during qualifying in Monaco earlier that year.
“When people complained that he didn’t let me pass, didn’t reward me for what I had done for him, I said, ‘Do you always have to have that attitude of wanting to win everything to become world champion?'”
“There’s something about Max. He’s an excellent person, but as soon as he gets in the car he turns into someone else. I think there was something else bothering him that he never let go of. Because we talked about it; we talked about all the problems from that year, and we thought they were behind us. The whole team thought that. So we were all surprised that it came up again at that moment.”
