Sergio Perez, during an interview on a podcast, explained his difficulties at Red Bull, revealing that the roots of the problem lie in the updates introduced in 2022.
The story between Sergio Perez and Red Bull started on a positive note. During the 2021 season, the Mexican driver played a crucial role in Max Verstappen’s first world championship title. The 2022 season also began on equal footing with Max, but at a certain point something changed. Perez himself, speaking on the “Crack Podcast”, explained how his struggles started at a very specific moment, with Verstappen directly involved.
It is well known that Red Bull has often favored the Dutch driver, with the numbers largely supporting that approach. However, there was a period in which Sergio Perez genuinely appeared to be on Max Verstappen’s level. As Sergio Perez confirmed, at the beginning of the 2022 season the two drivers were effectively on the same level. “At the start of the 2022 season, the car was accidentally too heavy,” Sergio Perez explained. “The weight distribution was very forward, which made it much more stable. That was always what I was looking for.” But then everything changed.
The updates that hurt Perez
At the start of 2022, Sergio Perez stated that he “was faster than Max on the simulator at that point”. However, precisely because of that excess weight, the Milton Keynes team introduced targeted updates to reduce the weight of the RB18. From that moment on, Sergio Perez lost his way, while Verstappen moved decisively ahead. “Until the updates arrived, I was on Max’s level. Once they came, the team clearly took a specific direction.”
From that point, Sergio Perez began to struggle significantly. “I started to suffer in the corners. I had no feeling with the unstable car, I felt like I was about to crash all the time. I didn’t have 100% control.”
A similar situation occurred again in 2023, when the RB19 initially appeared to be a stable car. “Max wins one race, I win another. After four races, he had won two and I had won two, so we were very evenly matched.” But once again, the updates proved damaging for the Mexican driver. “Then I lost control of the car again. All that pressure started, and it is very intense.”
As the technical battle for 2026 intensifies, Paul Monaghan’s insights remind us that the first victory of the season isn’t won on the podium, but in the race to simply get the car out of the garage. With a completely new set of regulations, the teams that manage to maximize their track time in Barcelona will hold a massive advantage heading into Bahrain. For those who fall behind the production schedule, the road to the Australian Grand Prix could become an uphill struggle before the first race has even begun.
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