It is undeniably harsh but inescapably true – Sergio Perez dramatically underachieved in 2023 in one of the greatest Formula 1 cars of all time.
Whether Red Bull’s RB19 will go down as the best F1 car ever designed will be debated long into the future. After all, the single-lap performance advantage it held over its peers throughout the 2023 was nothing compared to the occasionally ridiculous gaps that McLaren’s MP4-4, Williams’ FW14 or Ferrari’s F2002 enjoyed over their competition.
But what isn’t up for debate is the unprecedented level of success Red Bull achieved with the RB19 – almost entirely thanks to Max Verstappen. Although Perez secured his best ever finish in the world championship by taking second place, the fact he did so spoke more for how utterly dominant Red Bull were in 2023 than his team mate’s relentless run of success did.
Following on from an already historic 2022 season in which Verstappen had set an all-time record for most grand prix victories in a season, Perez arrived into 2023 determined that this would be the year he could put together a genuine campaign to fight his double-world champion team mate on an equal footing for the title. And once the season began, it appeared that he may have made a genuine step up over the winter.
With two grand prix victories in the opening four rounds in Jeddah and Baku, Perez found himself within striking distance of the world championship lead for the first time in his career, just six points shy of car number one. It didn’t matter that the main reason he had been given the lead on both occasions was because Verstappen had been struck with an element of misfortune – he still kept the world champion behind him once he was ahead.
Then Miami arrived and, with it, an extremely rare Verstappen error. A ruined first Q3 lap left the champion vulnerable and he was punished by a red flag when Charles Leclerc crashed on his final run, leaving Perez on pole with his team mate eight places lower. There was not a better opportunity for him to become the first Mexican driver to lead the Formula 1 drivers’ standings than this. And yet, despite leading the bulk of the race under minimal pressure, Perez was caught by Verstappen and could not fend him off in the closing laps, losing a victory that really should have been his.
Whether this was more of a psychological boost for Verstappen or a blow for Perez is impossible to know, but from that…
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