Verstappen’s impressive fightback ensures Perez’s early promise is short-lived · RaceFans

The complete reset brought about by Formula 1’s 2022 technical regulations change had a fascinating but short-lived effect on the balance of power at Red Bull.

In 2021 it had been clear that, while Sergio Perez was closer to the pace of Max Verstappen than his predecessors at Red Bull had been, he was not about to upstage their star driver. But Perez did more than enough to win a contract extension.

Once the well-sorted RB16B was replaced with the promising but overweight RB18, the balance of power shifted. Verstappen couldn’t get the new chassis to turn into corner the way he likes, and over the opening races there was often little to choose between him and Perez in terms of single-lap pace. Perez even grabbed the first pole position of his career in Jeddah, but an early Safety Car played against him, opening the door for Verstappen to open the team’s 2022 account with a win.

It wasn’t just Perez’s pace which was striking about this early phase in the season. Red Bull also suffered reliability problems which compromised their points-scoring in some early races. Verstappen had two race-ending failures in the first three rounds, one more than Perez, who was however delayed by a fault in Miami while his team mate won again.

This made the following race in Spain an interesting case study of Red Bull’s approach to team orders. Verstappen arrived 19 points behind leader Leclerc with the same margin over his team mate in third, but despite these narrow gaps at such an early stage in the season, Red Bull had Perez pull over for his team mate twice in Barcelona. He made way for Verstappen again two races later in Azerbaijan.

In between those came Perez’s latest contract extension and, days later, his first win of the year in Monaco. This came after he out-qualified Verstappen again, a feat this time aided by Perez spinning into a barrier, thwarting Verstappen’s attempt to improve. Later in the season speculation mounted that Verstappen suspected Perez’s brush with the barrier hadn’t been entirely accidental.

Perez’s car let him down in Canada, evening up the retirements score between him and Verstappen at two-all. Meanwhile Red Bull were making headway with their car, lightening the chassis and addressed the world champion’s handling concerns. From the mid-point in the season what had been a close contest in qualifying became utterly one-sided, Verstappen regularly coming out ahead by more than…