Sergio Perez sees silver lining to Red Bull driver’s ‘worst weekend ever’ in F1

Follow us on Google Discover

Sergio Perez has now admitted that the Red Bull driver had ‘my worst weekend ever’ in Formula 1 at the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix as Max Verstappen secured last season’s title.

But the 33-year-old can see a silver lining from the darkest days of his time in the pinnacle of motorsport. Perez believes he will only come back stronger from his nightmare Qatar GP last October. It could also be the catalyst which allows the Mexican to battle for the title in 2024.

Perez saw his dreams of beating Verstappen to the 2023 drivers’ championship vanish as he trudged through the Losail International Circuit’s gravel trap at Turn 2 during the Sprint. The Guadalajara native crashed on Lap 11 in a fight for P8 knowing he needed a top-three finish.

Sergio Perez watched his F1 title dreams evaporate at the Qatar GP

Perez initially capitalised on Nico Hulkenberg running Esteban Ocon wide exiting T1 to claim the racing line. But being on the outside at T2 meant he had no room to escape when Ocon drifted out and sandwiched Hulkenberg. The incident took all three drivers out of the Sprint.

The Qatar GP weekend had already left Perez facing an uphill fight to have any hopes for the title, too. He could only qualify in P13 with a lap time 0.979 seconds slower than Verstappen in Q2. Perez also sealed P8 in the Sprint Shootout, 0.928 seconds off Oscar Piastri for pole.

Contact with Alpine’s Ocon and Haas’ Hulkenberg in the Sprint then ensured Perez could not beat Verstappen to the title. While Perez would only manage to finish the Qatar GP down in 10th place. Verstappen even lapped his Red Bull teammate, who drew three time penalties.

Christian Horner called the Red Bull driver’s Qatar GP a ‘shocker’

Perez received three five-second penalties for exceeding track limits during the Qatar GP. He even irked Christian Horner to the extent the Red Bull team principal dubbed the Mexican’s race as ‘a shocker’. The Milton Keynes chief further described Perez’s weekend as ‘horrible’.

Now, however, Perez can spot a silver lining from what even the Red Bull driver describes as his ‘worst weekend’ in Formula 1. The Mexican smashed the reset button after the Qatar GP to understand just what went wrong at Losail. But he now claims he can come back stronger.

“Qatar was the worst weekend I can remember for a while in the sport – probably my worst weekend ever in the sport,” Perez told Speedcafe. “It was such a bad weekend that I felt like ‘I cannot be this bad’, that there was something else going on.

“So, we took the time to understand what was going on with the car. I needed to understand a lot of things that we were doing and to go into a lot of detail.

“The problems we had made me understand a lot more about what I was doing with the setup and which direction I needed to go when I got issues. It’s something that is definitely going to make us stronger.”