Sergio Perez established himself as a challenger to Max Verstappen in the initial few races of the 2023 season. However, as the year progressed, his ‘challenge’ faded away and the Dutchman started dominating him, quite comprehensively. Looking back on his short-lived title ambition, Perez talks about how much pressure everyone else put on him in an interview with Bernie Collins of Sky F1.
After the first four races of the 2023 season, Perez was closer than ever to Verstappen. The Guadalajara-born driver won two out of the opening four races, and the F1 community started to take his potential title challenge fairly seriously. Since then, however, everything has gone downhill for Perez.
It began really well, but the ending wasn’t what we had hoped for as we missed out on the podium.
Now on to MonzaEmpezamos muy bien.
Pero no fue el final que queríamos, perder el podio. ¡Ahora con todo a Monza!#SP11 #DutchGP pic.twitter.com/B0L28aoJia— Sergio Pérez (@SChecoPerez) August 27, 2023
In the interview, Perez reveals how he was never confident with the RB19, which should come as no surprise today, because of his huge gap to Verstappen. To add to his misery, almost everyone within the paddock started talking about him challenging his two-time world champion teammate for the championship.
Sergio Perez lost all the confidence he had
Currently, Perez is 138 points behind Verstappen, who is just a few more wins away from sealing a historic third-world championship title. Perez, however, regrets not putting up more of a fight, especially because of the start of the season he had. The 33-year-old does agree with his team’s chief advisor Helmut Marko, who insisted that everything started going wrong for him the moment he began thinking about the championship.
“We started the year so strongly, so you think you are a champion candidate after winning two races,” he said. “Then you suddenly have the feeling of: ‘ Ah, this weekend no longer feels like before ’, so you lose confidence because you are not completely sure about the car.”
As an F1 driver, when one isn’t confident being behind the wheel of their own challenger, its almost impossible to perform at an optimal level. That is very evident looking at Perez’s recent struggles to match up with Verstappen, despite them driving the same machinery.
Perez’s huge gap to Max Verstappen
Verstappen is on a league of his own this season. In the 13 races so far this season, he was won 11 of them, including the last nine outings. With another victory, he will break Sebastian Vettel’s 10-year-record of most consecutive races won in F1.
In contrast, Perez has been underperforming. He has been better than a lot of drivers on the track when it comes to race-pace. However, what several people are confused about his how he is so much slower than Verstappen, if they are driving the same car, which is being dominant for the Dutchman.
As Perez said in his interview with Bernie Collins, him losing confidence in the car could be a huge reason behind his relatively slow pace on the RB19.
