Sergio Perez has reflected on his time at Red Bull and the difficulties of driving alongside four-time champion Max Verstappen.
The Mexican driver joined the Milton Keynes outfit in 2021 after stints with Force India/Racing Point, McLaren and Sauber. While he started off as a strong second driver beside the Dutchman, with a fourth-place finish in the drivers' championship in his first year with the team, a third-place finish in 2022 and a second-place finish in 2023, he started to struggle more and more with the machinery, which he claims was tailored to Verstappen.
2024 left Perez finishing eighth in the drivers' standings. He was replaced for 2025 by rookie Liam Lawson, who was in turn replaced by Yuki Tsunoda after just two race weekends. The Japanese driver has now also been replaced for 2026 by Isack Hadjar.
"We had the best team," Perez said of Red Bull during an appearance on the Cracks Podcast.
"Unfortunately, everything was destroyed. We had the team to have dominated the next ten years in F1, I believe, and unfortunately, everything came to an end. But I was in the best team. A complicated team, right? Because being Max’s team-mate… just being Max’s team-mate is already very difficult, but being Max’s team-mate at Red Bull is the worst job there is in Formula 1, by far.
"Everyone forgot, didn’t they? When I arrived at Red Bull, I started getting results and everything, and everyone forgot how difficult it was to be in that seat. And I was very aware of what I was getting into. I arrived at Red Bull and they put you up against one of the greatest drivers in history."
The situation at the team was made clear to him at his first meeting with then-team principal Christian Horner.
"I knew what I was getting into," he added. "This project is built 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 has been created for Max. Max is our talent.' It’s like if Carlos Slim builds a team and I’m his driver, right? And you hire a Dutch guy. So it’s the same thing.
"So that’s what I was stepping into, and I was very aware of it. 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 wasn't all a struggle for the Mexican driver, though. At the start of 2022, he revealed that he was putting in faster times in the simulator than Verstappen, until upgrades were introduced that he did not get on well with.
"In 2022, when the car by mistake came out very heavy, we had a very heavy car with the weight distribution too far forward, right? So it was much, much more stable, it was always what I was looking for.
"So at that moment, I remember that in the simulator I was faster than Max, and I was already arriving at the race weekends thinking about winning the race, and everything came automatically. As a driver, when you don’t have to think about how to drive, about what the car is going to do, everything comes automatically. And then we had a car that maybe wasn’t so much in Max’s style, and in 2022 I started fighting for the championship with him… until the upgrades arrived.
"When the upgrades arrive, there is a very clear direction in which the team has to go, and that’s when I start to have problems. Because I no longer know what the car is going to do in the corner, I’m already thinking about not crashing, and then the crashes start, the accidents start. You don’t have 100% control.
"And then the same thing happens in 2023. The team builds a much more stable car for both drivers, but as soon as the upgrades arrive in 2023 and I start fighting for the championship with Max - he wins one race, I win another, he wins one, I win another, meaning that over four races he won two and I won two — so we were very evenly matched.
"And when we get to Barcelona, from fighting at the front, I go to being a second per lap slower. I no longer had control of the car. So then all this pressure starts. All this pressure, which was very hard because, well, the one at fault is the driver, right? Because you’re not focused, because you’re doing too many commercials, or because you’re involved in other things."
The 35-year-old added that the team would complain and that "everything was a problem".
"[The team would complain about] Everything. Practically everything. At Red Bull, everything was a problem. If I was very fast, it was a problem because it created a very tense atmosphere at Red Bull. If I was faster than Max, it was a problem. If I was slower than Max, it was a problem. So everything was a problem."
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