When the 2023 Formula 1 season began, it was believed that this was going to be another championship for Red Bull Racing, and that is how it is, however, it was believed that both drivers were going to be battling throughout the year and both were going to be contenders for the drivers’ championship.
The first race, the Bahrain Grand Prix, was won by Max Verstappen, while Sergio Perez was not far behind and was the winner of the second round of the season, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Subsequently, the two-time world champion stood on top of the podium during the third round, the Australian Grand Prix, but the Mexican was the winner of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Until then, and of the 4 races that had been held, 2 had been won by the Dutchman and 2 by the Mexican. The fight looked close, but after a bad run of results by Perez, everything went downhill.
His bad streak was probably the reason why the Mexican lost some confidence in his RB19. There was a period of 5 consecutive races in which Perez failed to enter Q3, giving indications that something was wrong.
Verstappen currently has a comfortable 125-point lead ahead of second place in the drivers’ championship, who is his teammate Sergio Perez. Despite the fact that Perez managed to finish second in the Belgian Grand Prix to complete a 1-2 victory for the energy drink team, the Mexican driver has confessed that he does not believe that the direction in which the RB19 has been developing has been beneficial to him.
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“It was quite important to finish strong the last two races especially,” the Mexican stated.
“There is no secret, as the car developed, I struggled a little bit more, things were not coming naturally anymore.
“I had to go very deep on them, on my driving style, adapt to it quite a bit and change it because the car has simply changed. And I think in the last two races were a lot better in that regard.”
When asked about what is different on the car that could be the reason of his struggles, he commented: “It’s just the sharpness, basically, at medium and high-speed that I’ve been struggling with. And that, especially when we had tricky conditions.
“It takes away some of the confidence. But I’m okay with it, it’s something that’s another challenge for me so I’m looking forward to that.”
On the other side of the garage, Max Verstappen took advantage of these problems with his teammate to considerably increase his lead in the drivers’ championship. The reigning champion managed to win the next 8 consecutive races after the last victory of his teammate. According to the Mexican driver, it is not a great position for a driver to be in.
“It hasn’t been easy for me, because I know the car’s potential and Max has been exploiting that. But when you don’t really have that feeling, that you know that your car has massive potential, it’s not an easy situation as a driver to be in,” the Mexican commented.
“Certainly, we’ve got a great race car and we just have to make sure we utilise it because you never know when you’re going to have a car that is as good as this one.”
Finally, Perez also acknowledged that this happened in the same way last year, as he was very comfortable with the car at the start of the season, but as it developed and improvements began, the comfort simply faded away.
“I think in a way, yes. It happened again.
“I think we have understood a lot of things, especially on the development side how we can figure it out. The team really knows what I really like and what I don feel more comfortable at.” Perez affirmed. “We’ve done some improvements during the summer break to try to make me feel more comfortable. So hopefully, this second half of the season we can show a good improvement.
“I’m not where I want to be yet where I was in the beginning of the season, where things were coming a lot more natural to me.”
