MPH: 'I can win anywhere' says Perez — back to his F1 tyre-whispering best
F1
Last year, Sergio Perez's Baku F1 win was an anomaly as Max Verstappen marched to the title. This year, Perez believes it can be a launchpad to the championship, having regained his talent for taming tyre wear
It’s often said a driver is only as good as his car, but actually there’s a lot of variation within that general truism. Quite aside with how the demands of a particular car dovetail with the strengths of a particular driver, there is also the drive to be better. Sergio Perez is proving to be a great case study in this as he continues to provide Max Verstappen’s only competition in a Red Bull out of the reach of the other teams for the foreseeable future.
His confidence is buzzing right now. You can see it in how he carries himself, hear it in the boldness of his choice of words. In the 13th year of his F1 career he’s flowering in a way that would not have been possible had not he ever got himself into a car as good as the RB19, but which also would not have happened had he not recognised where he needed to improve and then applied himself to doing so. He was talking about the process in Miami yesterday and it was fascinating.
“I feel much more like a Red Bull driver”
“One of my weaknesses last year was looking after the tyres. So during the winter I sat down with my engineers to go through because last year I was pretty disappointed, I didn’t have good race pace. I think we managed to understand a lot of things, we’ve been much better in that regard this year.” He’d arrived at Red Bull in 2021 with a reputation as ‘the tyre whisperer’ from his years at Force India where he many times delivered a bigger result than the car’s competitiveness warranted through his ability to eke out rear tyre life. But that wasn’t really apparent in a Red Bull with totally different dynamics to the Force Indias. “Yes, the way you looked after the tyres was very different. I had to learn a lot on how to look after the tyres in a Red Bull car. I think in my first year of ’21 I got better towards the end but 2022 with the regulation change I was not able to look after them properly. I feel now that I’m much better in my understanding of a Red Bull car. I feel much more like a Red Bull driver.”
Perez says his powers of tyre management have returned in 2023
Grand Prix Photo
His integrating with the car ran in parallel – and was directly linked to – how he became an increasingly integrated part of a team which remained Verstappen-centric. He was never going to arrive there and be able to out-perform such a talent. It would have been easy to have been dispirited when looking back at the end of each season and seeing the numbers: 14-1 down in comparable qualifying sessions in ’21, over 0.4sec adrift, 10 race wins vs one. Followed last year by 14-3 down in qualifying, 0.33sec down, and two wins vs 15. They are big deficits for any driver to get his head around. But he’s a tough old stager, very resilient – and he hasn’t just dug deep in addressing those deficits, he’s dug smart: fitting in around the edges of Max’s team and gradually sinking in, gaining the respect of those inside in a way that they have extended themselves to helping him.
This wasn’t how he worked in his Force India days. There, he was part of the furniture, the perfect driver for the team’s limited resources, a safe pair of hands, teasing results from the car but never with the impetus to push the team forward. It would have been inappropriate anyway; the team didn’t have the resource to instigate any big changes. No, Perez was the laid-back guy who did what he did very well. But everyone there got to see how his replacement Sebastian Vettel was a much more appropriate match with the new level of investment in the team’s Lawrence Stroll era. Vettel pushed, probed and demanded, had things changed, processes redrawn. He led and made the weight of his status as a multiple world champion count. The team was bowled over by the contrast in energy.
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Chris Medland
Perez’s resilience, his refusal to just accept Verstappen’s dominance, has forced him to be more proactive than ever he was before. And it seems to be working. He certainly feels it is – and that in itself is probably bringing performance. Listening to his assessment of his victory in Baku last Sunday, there’s no doubting the steel or the confidence. “I think in the circuits you have to be very strong in the race, very strong with the pressure. You have to be able to handle the pressure and you’re not able to make mistakes because if you do a small mistake, in a normal circuit you can get away with it. But in the street you cannot get away with those mistakes. I think probably I have more confidence than others come race day on a street circuit. At the end of the day the way I won in Baku on pure pace, it doesn’t matter if it’s a street circuit or a permanent circuit. If I’m able to do it in Baku I’m able to do it anywhere.”
Yes, he was lucky in the timing of the safety car there. But even without that piece of luck, he appeared to have the edge anyway. Red Bull’s pitting of Verstappen came just as Perez had got to within DRS range. When the positions were reversed in the second stint, Verstappen was unable to get to that critical threshold.
The big test of whether this form can be sustained will come as the calendar moves away from the street tracks, where the demands are different and Verstappen is stratospheric. But let’s see. “There is still more to come in becoming more of a Red Bull driver, the way to drive the Red Bull car,” Perez says. “Once you’re really established in a team and you understand the concept of a car you are able to extract the maximum and that only comes with time and the more time you spend with the team the better. But I certainly believe I’ve made a big step.”
