The driver who ended the curse of Red Bull’s second F1 seat

For two weeks earlier this season, Sergio Perez achieved something no Red Bull driver had managed since Daniel Ricciardo in 2018. He made people, just for a moment, entertain the idea that a team-mate might have a shot at beating Max Verstappen in the standings. The Mexican outqualified his reigning champion team-mate in Monaco to tee up a fine victory. Next time out in Azerbaijan, he again pipped Verstappen over a lap to snare the higher grid spot. In that window, he was more effectively mastering the ground-effect RB18 and had the momentum.

Ultimately, whatever hype there was proved short-lived. The following day in Baku, Perez showed a rare case of mismanaging his tyres and soon had to move over, enabling Verstappen to sail by for what would become the win. Since then, the assumed competitive order has been restored and now a considerable swing would be required for Perez to pip his colleague, who is 57 points ahead in the championship table.

Nevertheless, a point was made. Unlike previous occupiers of the second Red Bull seat, Perez had been briefly considered in the same breath as the Dutch ace. Verstappen’s rise to power markedly set back the grand prix careers of Daniil Kvyat, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon. All three were relegated from the main team to either make room for Verstappen, or for not getting close enough to him and in turn letting nearest rival Mercedes have an easier ride on its way to consecutive constructors’ championship spoils.

Their toils prompted Red Bull in late 2020 to step outside its own driver pool for the first time in 13 years when it sought a more competitive replacement for Albon and hired ex-Racing Point pilot Perez. Like Mark Webber for 2007 following his stint at Williams, he was a free agent. 

Two triumphs and nine other podiums later, Perez has a two-year contract extension with the Milton Keynes-based squad that will take him beyond his 34th birthday – something he amusingly let slip on his way to the principality podium when he bumped into team boss Christian Horner. “I probably signed too early,” he joked in range of a microphone two days before the deal went public.

Why is it then that it’s Perez who has nailed down the second seat rather than the talent nurtured by the Red Bull Junior programme and its head Helmut Marko? Why has he been the one to end the Verstappen team-mate curse? To fully recognise what Perez has got right to end the revolving door policy, first there must be an understanding of what his predecessors got wrong.

Red Bull has struggled to find a second driver who can consistently get close to Verstappen, ditching Gasly midway through 2019 for Albon after he was lapped in Hungary

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

In an issue of the Red Bulletin magazine that coincided with the Austrian GP earlier this month, Marko gave these assessments. Not one to mince his words, he reckoned Gasly “looked for excuses instead of tackling his own mistakes”. He wonders if “very fast” Albon is “too nice… a bit like David Coulthard, who everyone likes but wasn’t tough enough in the end”. They were squaring up to Verstappen, who “is the fastest driver we’ve ever had. He’s also gradually becoming the most complete racing driver. He is the type of generational talent you see once in a decade. That perfect combination of speed, performance and self-confidence is unique.” 

Against such a tough benchmark, Perez didn’t hit the ground running. It took until a win inherited in round six of 2021 in Azerbaijan, after Verstappen’s tyre blowout and Lewis Hamilton’s restart brake error, for him to visit the podium. While he backed that up with third in the following round at Paul Ricard, only in the last seven races did he truly find a run of form.

That stuttering start was underlined by a continuing weakness for ex-Sauber and McLaren driver Perez: he would often fail to maximise the car in qualifying. Aboard the 2021 Red Bull, this was made more critical by his struggles to pass slower cars. Too often, he was out of the lead battle. Even if victories weren’t mandated, he wasn’t as effective a lieutenant as Valtteri Bottas was proving at Mercedes. 

Where Verstappen proved most devastating compared to his short-lived team-mates and in this early period against Perez was with his ability to master the lineage of Adrian Newey-designed high-rake racers. Verstappen is a driver who is at sea with understeer and, somewhat perversely, doesn’t crave a balanced car either. Instead, Verstappen is happiest when he can absolutely rely on the front-axle to grip and then is more than able to tame the subsequent snappy rear.  

"Last year’s car was a great car, but it had a very unique driving style. You had to adapt to it. I managed to do so but it took me a while" Sergio Perez

By way of an instant comedown to earth after his promotion, Gasly discovered these spikey traits during a brutal 2019 pre-season test at Barcelona, when he binned the RB15 twice in four days. And while initially Verstappen and Albon both took trips to the gravel at the Spanish venue the following year in the even more unforgiving RB16, it was the Brit-Thai that fared much worse catching the rear in the long run. 

Make no mistake, Perez was also hurt by the skittish characteristics. So much so, come mid-season 2021 he requested tweaks to neutralise the RB16B. He was then more comfortable, but he fell off the pace. As a result, he was soon pumping in the hours in the simulator, having learned the only meaningful way forward was to go along with Verstappen’s set-up.  

For this season, arguably the biggest regulatory overhaul in F1 history provided a reset point. Rake has largely been eliminated to best exploit ground-effects. This has helped level the playing field. Ex-Ferrari Driver Academy member Perez explains: “Last year’s car was a great car, but it had a very unique driving style. You had to adapt to it. I managed to do so but it took me a while. I came [to the team] with no testing and straight into it in a [set of] regulations that have been there for a while. That was hard. Starting all from zero [for 2022], I think that’s been quite helpful.” 

After grappling with the tricky RB16B, Perez accepted Verstappen's set-up was faster in 2021 and worked hard to adjust to it

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The RB18 certainly started the campaign with a much greater propensity for understeer than its forerunners – a characteristic only exaggerated by it struggling to meet the minimum dry car and driver weight limit of 798kg. That particularly helped Perez close the gap in qualifying, when the car was running with empty tanks to ensure the excess bulk contributed a greater percentage of its overall mass.

All told, it allowed renowned tyre whisperer Perez to close the gap to his team-mate. This paid off most handsomely at tighter street circuits that promote washing wide. Perez outqualified Verstappen in Jeddah, Monaco and Baku, having proved particularly effective at agitating the front end to get it to answer to him. On show was the adaptable Perez who garnered the plaudits in 2012 and 2016 most notably. 

But so soon after Perez had hit his peak in Monaco and on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and with a new contract to show for it, he went off the boil. He shunted in a slippery qualifying session in Montreal and was notably not piling the pressure on the Ferraris at Silverstone and the Red Bull Ring. What should have been a top-four shootout for pole instead become a three-way tussle.

This came after the RB18 gained an upgraded floor for the British GP, with Perez since admitting that the development curve has better suited the other side of the garage: “The development of the car has been… I haven’t been as comfortable with it as I was in the beginning. Let’s put it that way. I’ve got some work to do to understand what’s going on.” 

Given Perez initially looked closer to Verstappen with the return of ground-effects, perhaps it is not the driver who has actively ended the second-seat jinx. Instead, maybe he has felt the benefit of good timing. As such, notwithstanding any car upgrades working in Verstappen’s favour, how might Albon and Gasly be faring if they had their time again, only plying their trade with this new breed of machinery? Now at Williams after his year on the sidelines testing for Red Bull, Albon suggests he might have got closer.

“I quite enjoy these cars,” he says. “I feel like they’re a little bit more tricky to drive. Obviously, they’re stiffer, they’re lower, they move around a little bit more than previously. I enjoy that. I feel like it’s a little bit more towards Formula 2, Formula 3 kind of driving.

“With comparisons between teams, it’s very hard to say. But of course, I feel confident in the car, and I definitely feel more confident driving this car than I did the Red Bull.”

Gasly, meanwhile, reckons his fate would still “depend on other factors” after he felt marginalised in the team, without equal tools to have a fair crack against Verstappen.  

Perez has outqualified Verstappen on all three street tracks in 2022 so far

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Perez has also given cause for Red Bull to extend his contract, or at least not a need to jettison him, because he is a team player. He fulfilled this part of the brief most famously in Abu Dhabi for the controversial 2021 title decider. Perez immediately slipped past Lando Norris for third to ensure he could play rear-gunner if required. Then, Red Bull left him out to retain track position when Hamilton and Verstappen pitted.

He was operating under the instruction to “hold up Lewis… back him up”, and the Mercedes did slipstream past, only for Perez to smartly cut back at the apex. That allowed Hamilton to get better drive out of the corner before the RB16B sailed back ahead with DRS to delay the seven-time champion through the fiddly final sector and onto the next lap. Verstappen closed to within view, Perez naturally letting him overtake without hesitation as part of the ultimate team game. “Checo is a legend,” Verstappen acknowledged over the radio. 

As Verstappen seized his maiden title, there was little debating the Red Bull driver pecking order that day and that season. But now in his second term at the team, Perez does feel more established, more comfortable calling the shots.

“The longer you spend with a team, the better it gets,” he says. “In many regards, just the confidence within the team, knowing the procedures, knowing how a team operates, how they think in terms of strategies, how they see the big picture. It’s all about understanding the big picture, as a group, as a team. And certainly, guiding the direction of the car on my set-up, doing my own thing, it has helped me a lot.” 

"I want to beat Max. That’s no secret. But I also want the whole Red Bull team to do great. Max wins are not great for my championship hopes. But at the end of the day, I’m Mr Happy because it’s my team" Sergio Perez

While he has found his feet and his voice at Red Bull, Perez hasn’t suddenly become bolshy to unduly jeopardise his position. In the Spanish GP, it was Verstappen who single-handedly threw himself off the road at Turn 4 to fall behind race leader Charles Leclerc and Perez. As part of Verstappen’s recovery to the eventual win after the Ferrari expired, Perez was twice asked to move aside for his team-mate. This came with the promise from Red Bull that it would “pay you back later”. It never did.

The aggrieved driver’s reply was simply: “That’s very unfair, but OK.” It was he who backed down and asked for any explanation to take place off-air and behind closed doors rather than get hot-headed and make a point about being very publicly established as the number two driver so early into the campaign.

Just two races later, this time in Azerbaijan, again Perez was told to let Verstappen pass without a fight after allowing his tyre temperatures to drop too much under a virtual safety car. He diligently obliged, later saying: “It was the right call not to fight because I didn’t have any pace at the time and Max deserved to be ahead at that point.”  

With internal friction kept to a minimum, in both races Perez brought up the rear in a Red Bull 1-2 – even if that had been twice decided by Ferrari engine explosions. Nevertheless, he hadn’t rocked the boat in order to preserve the “great relationship” with his stablemate. Crucially, he’d matched the underlying expectation that comes with the seat: get close to Verstappen to blunt rivals’ point-scoring as much as possible.  

Perez has earned credit for being willing to be a team player, seen notably in Spain

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“I think we have a very good level of respect for each other,” says Perez, who knows all too well that delivering on the title dream he still harbours will necessarily entail beating Verstappen. “I want to beat Max. That’s no secret. But I also want the whole Red Bull team to do great. Max wins are not great for my championship hopes. But at the end of the day, I’m Mr Happy because it’s my team. The competition is only increasing. So, it’s important to keep pushing hard and keep going forwards.” 

The competition this year is headed by Ferrari. As such, while the 2021 comparison was with Bottas, this season Perez must be assessed against the job Carlos Sainz is doing in the shadow of Leclerc.

Former Toro Rosso driver Sainz didn’t enjoy a similarly smooth transition to ground-effects as he struggled to tame the unpredictable F1-75. While that began with being a touch adrift of Leclerc in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the Spaniard then fired himself into the gravel to retire in Australia before being punted off at Imola. And there, on Ferrari home soil, Perez again met Marko’s expectations perfectly. Not only did he finish second in a Red Bull 1-2 but, by having track position over Leclerc, he led the chasing Monegasque to overdrive and force himself into a spin to bleed away further points.  

It’s displays of this type that have convinced Red Bull to retain Perez. Not only that, but unlike the top-team tenures of Gasly and Albon, there never seemed to be serious doubt hanging over his position.

“[I think they kept me] because of the work I do for the team,” reckons Perez, who had considerably more F1 experience than his predecessors when he arrived at Red Bull. “It’s the work I do behind the scenes, it’s what I delivered on track. At the end of the day, the team has all the information.

“Red Bull is in a privileged position, they can have any driver they want… well, they can have a lot of drivers because Red Bull will be attractive for pretty much anyone. They have all the data, they have their junior drivers. At the end of the day, there’s a reason why I’m here.” 

Verstappen adds: “What is important to the team is that both cars are scoring solid points and that’s what we’re doing. So, I think it was quite a straightforward decision to give Checo another contract. It’s been really enjoyable working with him. We have a good time on and off-track and that’s also very important to a team that there are no heated moments. We all try to win the race but at the end of the day, also we try to win as a team and work together and I think we’ve been doing that really well. That’s why he is staying.”

It might have been Verstappen’s exceptional talent and his particular car demands that created the problem over who should have the second Red Bull seat. But finally, after much trial and error, it seems that Perez is the solution.

Perez has succeeded where his predecessors were unable to and earned a contract extension as a result

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool