Sergio Perez reflects on his time at Red Bull and the difficulties of driving with four-time champion Max Verstappen.
The Mexican driver joins the Milton Keynes team in 2021 after spells with Force India/Racing Point, McLaren and Sauber. While he started out as a strong second driver alongside the Dutchman, finishing fourth in the drivers’ championship in his first year with the team, finishing third in 2022 and second in 2023, he began to struggle increasingly with the machine he claimed was tailor-made for Verstappen.
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In 2024, Perez finished eighth in the drivers’ standings. In 2025, he was replaced by rookie Liam Lawson, who was replaced by Yuki Tsunoda after just two race weekends. The Japanese driver has now been replaced by Isack Hadjar for 2026 as well.
“We have the best team,” Perez said of Red Bull during his appearance. Crack Podcast.
“Unfortunately, everything was destroyed. I believe that our team dominated F1 for the next ten years and unfortunately it all came to an end. But I was in the best team. It’s a complex team, right? Because being Max’s team-mate… just being Max’s team-mate is very difficult, but being Max’s team-mate at Red Bull is by far the worst job in Formula One.
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“Everyone forgets, doesn’t it? When I arrived at Red Bull and I started getting results and everything, everyone forgot how difficult it was to be in that seat. I knew exactly what I was getting into. When I arrived at Red Bull, they put you against one of the greatest drivers in history.”
In his first meeting with then-captain Christian Horner, the team’s situation became clear to him.
“I knew what I was going to face,” he added. “This project was created for Max. When I first sat down with Christian, he told me: ‘Look, we’re going to race with two cars because we have to race with two cars. But this project was created for Max. Max is our genius.’ It’s like Carlos Slim put together a team and I was his driver, right? And then you hired a Dutch guy. So it’s the same thing.
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“This is what I’m going to get into, I’m very aware of that. I told him: ‘It doesn’t matter. In this team, I’m going to develop the car, I’m going to support the car, I’m going to support the team.'”
It’s not all a struggle for the Mexican rider, though. At the beginning of 2022, he revealed that he was faster than Verstappen in the simulator until upgrades were introduced that he was not comfortable with.
“In 2022, when the car mistakenly became very heavy, we had a very heavy car with the weight distribution too far forward, right? So it was very, very stable, which is always what I was looking for.
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“So at that moment I remember in the simulator I was faster than Max and I was already thinking about winning the race on the race weekend and everything happened automatically. As a driver, when you don’t have to think about how to drive, what the car is going to do, everything happens automatically. And then we had a car that was maybe not quite in Max’s style and I started fighting for the championship with him in 2022… until the upgrade came.
“When the upgrade came the team had to go in a very clear direction and that’s when I started to have problems. Because I no longer knew what the car was going to do in the corners, I was already thinking about not crashing and then the crash started and the accident started. You don’t have 100 per cent control.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing
“Then the same thing happened in 2023. The team built a more consistent car for both drivers, but once the 2023 upgrades came I started fighting for the title with Max – he won one race, I won another, he won one race, I won another, which meant that out of four races, he won two and I won two – so we were very evenly matched.
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“When we got to Barcelona, ​​from the battle at the front, I was a second slower every lap. I wasn’t in control of the car anymore. So all this pressure started. All this pressure is very difficult because, well, it’s the driver who’s at fault, right? Because you’re not concentrating, because you’re doing too much advertising, or because you’re involved in other things.”
The 35-year-old added that teams will complain and “everything is a problem”.
“[The team would complain about] everything. Almost everything. At Red Bull, everything is a problem. If I’m very fast, that’s a problem because it creates a very tense atmosphere at Red Bull. If I’m faster than Max, there’s a problem. If I’m slower than Max, that’s a problem. So everything becomes a problem. “
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