Sergio Perez says his engineers always supported him at Red Bull, but he happy with the acknowledgement with an apology.
The problems that Red Bull is now facing was already creeping up from last season onward which only magnified this year. But they were in denial of sorts since Max Verstappen was getting the results – even at the expense of Perez, whose struggles were highlighted.
He could have even lost his F1 seat due to that. But now that Verstappen is also facing similar problems, Red Bull has realised its mistake of sorts. And they are now playing catch-up behind McLaren, who has overtaken them in the constructors’ race.
Perez is relieved that the engineers apologised to him for not adhering to him as much as they should have, but he adds that they have always supported him. Now he is able to drive the car as he wants to extract the maximum.
They are on the right path as per him, but it won’t be a quick solution. “The problem I had earlier in the year is that I had a car that I couldn’t drive, I was just very uncomfortable with the car,” said Perez to media. “And it was very hard driving into the corners not knowing what it was going to do.
“It’s really difficult to maximise your performance. Now the team have found a lot of direction, a lot of our issues. So now, at least we know what the issues are and we can drive around them. Before we didn’t know and it was just all very difficult to drive and I’m just happy that it looks like we’re going in the right direction.
“In a way, yes. To be fair, some of the engineers after Monza came to me and did apologise, in a way, because now it’s a lot clearer what the issues I was talking about. But in fairness, I have always had all the support from my engineers. It was always the speculation around it and people saying the problem was I was not focused enough in my racing or other things.
“But at the end of the day, I’m just happy that we found out the problem and that we can focus on that and improve it,” summed up Perez. Team boss Horner weighed in the situation. He stressed that the results from Verstappen was enough to push them forward, as he defended the call to not pay as much attention on the side of the Mexican.
“I think if we really delve deep into the data, we can actually see hints of it from Barcelona last year,” said Horner. “And I think the problem is, Max’s talent is so good that he’s able to mask some of the issues, particularly on the way into corner entries and that’s where Checo has really struggled in comparison to his team-mate.
“When the downforce came off the cars in Monza, both of them had identical issues, and it really highlighted where the key issues were in the car. So, obviously Checo is more sensitive. But you know, I think if we can give them both a better car, they’ll both be in a better position. This business is driven by the stopwatch.
“So of course Max was still dominating last year and wasn’t talking about the same issues as Checo. So, of course, your driver that’s where you take the most feedback. You’ve got a lot of sensors on the car, but it’s the feeling of the driver that you’re tuning the car to. And when one car is performing as it has been, that is what drives the development.”
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