Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen had a rocky year as teammates in 2022, despite guiding Red Bull to their first constructors’ title win since 2013. It all started at the 2022 Monaco GP, where a late session crash by Perez hampered his teammate’s final qualifying run, creating a domino effect that lasted until the end of the season.
During the final Q3 run, Perez crashed while exiting the hairpin corner, which red-flagged the session. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who didn’t see Perez’s stranded corner on the exit, slammed his F175 into him which brought about the end of the session.
Perez was ahead of Verstappen in the timing charts when the Mexican crashed. According to former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer, the Guadalajara-born driver intentionally crashed so that he could start ahead of Max Verstappen in the race.
Why would Sergio Perez intentionally sabotage Max Verstappen?
Ahead of the 2023 Monaco GP next weekend, Palmer was a panelist alongside journalist Will Buxton in the race preview. While they were talking about Perez and Verstappen, Buxton brought last year’s fiasco up. The Brit wondered if Perez had intentionally crashed his car in Q3, to which Palmer shared that he believed that was the case indeed.
“I think it was (intentional),” Palmer says. “No one really picked it up at the time. And why would they? He was in third. I think he stamps on the throttle with a lot of steering lock. And the Verstappen camp in Red Bull was pretty sure it was deliberate.”
‼️ Why Perez’s Monaco crash was totally abnormal, explained through the onboard and telemetries 📈
The answer in this thread: read on! 👀#F1 @SChecoPerez pic.twitter.com/JuDcfhMhQa
— 📈Formula Data Analysis (@FDataAnalysis) November 14, 2022
Perez was in third position when he crashed, one place ahead of Verstappen. The Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc were P1 and P2 respectively and at the moment, fans were sure that the Scuderia were set for a one-two finish. However, Ferrari’s poor strategy saw Leclerc slip down to fourth.
Perez meanwhile, managed to get the better of both Sainz and Leclerc to find himself in first. Verstappen on the other hand, couldn’t get ahead of Sainz and finished P3, which shows how vital that final qualifying run could’ve been. Had Verstappen started ahead of Perez, he could have been the one winning the Monaco GP.
Tensions between Verstappen and Perez
After the Monaco GP saga, Verstappen’s camp was furious with Perez. His father Jos Verstappen was sure that Perez crashed intentionally to prevent his son from jumping him in the final run. This created a lot of tension between the Red Bull drivers, and Christian Horner had to intervene.
Months later at the Sao Paolo GP, when Perez needed to pass Verstappen to move to sixth and get some extra points in his fight for P2 in the championship, the Dutchman straight up refused. Even though Verstappen didn’t publicly reveal the reason behind his controversial call, it’s very possible that he kept the fiasco of Monaco in mind.
This year, Perez is closer than ever to Verstappen in the standings. The 33-year-old is P2 in the standings, just 14 points behind the leader Verstappen.
