Verstappen Is Upset With Sergio Perez’s Recent Rise, Says Damon Hill: “Max Doesn’t Like It”

Max Verstappen has now gone winless for seven consecutive races, the longest streak since the start of the ground-effect era in 2022. On the other hand, his teammate Sergio Perez, who has been struggling with his form in 2024, seems to be getting better in the last couple of races with the Mexican outqualifying Verstappen for the first time after 33 races at Baku last weekend.

According to former F1 world champion Damon Hill, this shift in the dynamics between the two teammates is something Verstappen is not enjoying and the 1996 champion believes that it is affecting his driving.

“There seems to be something more to the liking for Checo and he’s coming back into the picture again but then it’s no good for Max,” Hill said on a recent Sky Sports F1 podcast. “I’m literally on the outside looking in reading between the lines when it comes to modifications to the car.” He further added,

“But relatively, Checo is getting closer to his potential performance… Max doesn’t like it and that’s upsetting his driving. So yeah, it’s that’s what seems to me to be going on.”

Interestingly, Hill also pointed out that at the start of the ground-effect era, Perez was much closer to the performance of the Dutchman compared to where he has been recently. Hill even went as far as to say that Verstappen played a role in turning the car’s development direction to suit himself early in 2022.

That’s not it, as he also believes that as Red Bull is now desperately searching for clues to fix the RB20, certain changes in the characteristics of the car are now starting to suit Perez more than Verstappen.

Verstappen dismissed the idea of RB20 being made more suitable for Perez

Perez produced a positive surprise at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix last weekend as he seemed to be much more comfortable with his RB20 compared to Verstappen. After qualifying ahead of the Dutchman on Saturday, the Mexican was also in the hunt for a podium finish.

However, an unfortunate crash with Carlos Sainz in the last few laps of the race resulted in him failing to score any points. On the other hand, Verstappen was set to finish seventh until the collision between these two drivers resulted in him getting promoted to fifth.

When asked after the race if Red Bull had been developing the car to suit Perez more than himself, he simply dismissed such speculations. In fact, he stated that some of the changes they made to his car that he was happy with initially ended up costing him. He said,

“I think the changes that we did to the car were positive but then you still need to put the speed into the car. I think we were heading into the right direction but the changes we made before qualifying tipped it over the edge and we paid the price on that unfortunately in the race”.

Verstappen’s struggle was evident from the fact that championship rival Lando Norris defeated him despite starting the race all the way back in 15th. Now, Verstappen will hope that he and Red Bull can have a better race this weekend in Singapore.