Sergio Perez admits why Red Bull F1 driver was ‘lost’ throughout 2023 season

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Sergio Perez has now admitted why the Red Bull driver was ‘lost’ throughout the 2023 Formula 1 season after ending the year 290 points behind teammate Max Verstappen.

The Milton Keynes team were the cream of the crop in 2023 as their RB19 became the most dominant car in F1 history. Red Bull won 21 of the 22 Grand Prix with Verstappen stood atop the podium 19 times. Perez won two of the first four rounds but failed to maintain his results.

Qualifying was often his downfall this year as Perez failed to reach Q3 for nine of the races in contrast to Verstappen’s two Q2 exits. Perez’s qualifying also finished after Q1 at three races amid his early exits. Only Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton never bowed out after Q1 in 2023.

Sergio Perez was ‘getting lost weekend-in, weekend-out’ in 2023

Perez’s qualifying problems started at April’s Australian GP when he beached his Red Bull in the gravel without posting a time in Q1. But his plight truly began at May’s Monaco GP after a crash in Q1. The 33-year-old could only manage to finish the race in the Principality in P16.

His Monte Carlo horror show followed Verstappen beating pole-man Perez to win the Miami GP, too. The 26-year-old came through from P9 on the grid to win the race and embark on a record-setting 10-race winning streak. Perez would only get five podium finishes in that run.

Sergio Perez had ‘deep’ talks at Red Bull’s factory after the Qatar GP

Perez believes ‘deep’ conversations back at Red Bull’s factory following October’s Qatar GP allowed the Mexican to turn his troubled campaign around. The Guadalajara native capped a torrid run of results with a P10 finish in the Grand Prix after also crashing out of the Sprint.

“I had a really deep one in Qatar, where I went back to the factory for like a week and went through it very much indeed with all the engineers,” Perez explained, via Motorsport Week.

“We understood a lot of things that we were doing to compensate the weaknesses that we had. We were probably taking the wrong approach with the car and trying to compensate it too much with car set-up and ultimately just getting lost weekend-in, weekend-out.”

Verstappen secured the 2023 F1 drivers’ championship after Perez crashed out of the Sprint at the Qatar GP. The incident was not of his making after Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg collided whilst three-wide. But it followed Perez’s error-strewn races in Singapore and Japan.

Red Bull struggling to find a set-up suitable for the Marina Bay Street Circuit saw Perez start the Singapore GP from P13. He could then only salvage a P8 result in the race and earned a five-second penalty for punting Williams’ Alex Albon out of the place with a naïve overtake.

Perez then repeated his naïve move at the Japanese GP and punted Haas’ Kevin Magnussen. Red Bull initially retired the Mexican’s car due to the damage it sustained from their contact at the hairpin. But his team briefly sent Perez back out to serve another five-second penalty.