It feels like an eternity since Perez lived up to his former nickname, “The King of Road Racing” and won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. In doing so, he narrowed his lead over teammate Max Verstappen to just six points and vowed to fight for the 2023 title all the way.
His subsequent pole position at the Miami Grand Prix left Verstappen ninth on the grid and was an opportunity to highlight his qualities, but when the Dutchman broke through the field and demoted Perez, Verstappen suffered a mental breakdown.
I received a severe blow. It was the beginning of a “year of terror” for Perez.
Perez struggled with his car starting in the next race in Barcelona, missing Q3 for the fifth time in a row. The only time he failed to qualify was in a race in Hungary. Consecutive 9th place was an unacceptable result and unfortunate for a car that was dominant in the field.
Despite his contract in 2024, pressure on the Mexican began to mount when Daniel Ricciardo returned to sister team AlphaTauri as a replacement for Nyk de Vries, with Red Bull back on the other side. The team had the clear objective of testing his potential during his arrival.
Perez’s breaking point was the Qatar Grand Prix, where he looked completely lost and lacking in confidence, with six laps to go more than 80 seconds behind Verstappen, who won Perez the championship he once coveted. He finished in 10th place.
With alarm bells ringing for a while, Perez was so shocked that he headed to the team’s headquarters and spent three days working in simulators and brainstorming with engineers how to get out of the hole. Him as Mariana Trough.
In a limited round-table interview with Motorsport.com, when Perez was asked why he waited until Qatar took action and called for a brainstorming session, he replied: “Qatar is really long It was the worst weekend in the history of this sport.
“It was such a bad weekend that I really felt like, ‘It can’t be that bad, something is going on.'”
“Sometimes when you have back-to-back races like this, you get that feeling. There just isn’t enough time to really consider everything that’s going on, so we felt like we really needed to take some time to understand what direction we were going.
“Obviously there was a flaw in the set-up of the car and we were going through trial and error every weekend but couldn’t overcome it. “But once we got this under control, we understood a lot of the things that we were trying to compensate for, and it basically meant that we weren’t just not doing things right.
“I think that was really, really good for us. I mean, it was bad that it happened, but in a way it was really good because it made the team really strong.”
Perez said, “I’m not the kind of guy to end my career like that.”
Amid speculation about his future, Perez said he had no plans to resign, even though he now admits the crisis has taken away the joy of his job.
“No, of course that would be the easiest way, because sometimes it was very tiring,” the 33-year-old said flatly. “But I’m not the type of person who is ready to give up at this stage of my career and just call it a day. I never thought about that.”
“I’m aware of the responsibility I have and I’m not the sort of guy that will blame people around me for the results. At the end of the day I took responsibility for it and I had to turn around the situation quite a lot.”
On talk about his replacement by Ricciardo or others, he said: “To be honest, I was not really thinking of it as a driver. I was more focused on making sure I could enjoy the weekends and be able to have that.
“I was having some weekends that were so difficult that they were not fun. I’m here because I still love what I’m doing and I’m here because I still have a lot of fun, a lot of enjoyment. And that was my main focus, that we really need things to turn them around.
“I had some really difficult times in a few months, let’s put it that way. I went from fighting from the championship to being in a difficult boat, and not having that confidence with the car.
“But the end of the day, if you want to be at Red Bull, I’m aware of how strong mentally you have to be to be here. And it’s something that I got stronger at. You learn so much from the bad days, much more than from the good days.”
Perez’s fighting spirit was on display in Mexico, where an audacious outside move to take the lead into Turn 1 ended in tears. When asked if that move summed up his attitude about the season once his championship bid had petered out, he replied: “Yeah, basically. I really felt like I had a real option going first into Turn 1 if I made it stick. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out but it could have been a massive result.
“If I’m fighting for the championship, I think you cannot be that aggressive, but if you’re fighting for second, then it’s a different story.”
Taking just one podium in the final third of the season, in Las Vegas, and finishing on half the points tally of Verstappen, Perez is aware he still needs to find more over the off-season, but he feels the way he managed to steady the ship after Qatar was encouraging for 2024.
“I always say people will only remember where you finish in Abu Dhabi, but I’m aware of the year I had,” he reflected.
“I think I’ve learned a lot and I’m happy with how we managed to turn our season around.
“We really came out of it stronger than before and made good use of those bad days.”
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