Azerbaijan GP
Miami GP
Monaco GP
Four races in – and still Sergio Pérez was hanging in there, not letting team-mate Max Verstappen off the hook as the 2023 world championship apparently distilled into a battle between the Red Bull drivers. This had been against general expectations. But not so dissimilar to the start of 2022, other than this Red Bull has a bigger advantage over the competition.
There was a brief period in the first part of last season when Pérez was providing stiff competition for Verstappen. You may recall how it came to a head after Monaco, a race Pérez won, partly because he’d brought out the red flags on his final Q3 run, preventing Verstappen from completing a lap which had looked set to vault him ahead on the grid. It was Pérez and Verstappen’s respective starting positions of second and fourth which was the difference between first and third on race day. Verstappen believed Pérez had spun deliberately and wasn’t shy of saying so even to the outside world. So it can be imagined how it was inside the team.
Max’s father Jos took to Max’s own website to express his disappointment with how Red Bull had not prioritised Max in their
