Sergio Perez acknowledged he needs to understand why he hasn’t been able to perform consistently across a season since joining Red Bull.
His downward trajectory over the 2023 season was more noticeable than in his previous two with Red Bull due to the team’s dominance. His only win in 2021 came in round six of 22, but although he never finished higher than third after that, he scored 18 more points in the first half of the season than the second half.
Last year was a similar story, as Perez won twice in the first four rounds but never again. From being 14 points behind team mate Max Verstappen after five rounds, he was 99 down another five events later.
“I think it’s been a trend,” he told media including RaceFans at the end of the season.
“I want to be able to hit consistency, to build a platform,” said Perez. “I think what we lacked this year is the progression.”
His strong start to the season was quickly reversed. “We started the year really high, on par with Max, but we were just not able to evolve through the season,” said Perez. “If anything, we went backwards at times.
“So I think that will be my main priority, to be able to progress through the season, wherever I start. It’s just important that weekend by weekend we keep evolving and keep just getting better and better.”
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He first noticed his lack of progression in Monaco and Barcelona, which hosted rounds six and seven of the season.
“I had a few bad weekends,” he acknowledged. “We started the year really strongly the first five, six races, but then we couldn’t progress together with the car. That’s something I lacked this year that I want to improve massively onto next year.
“I think these problems that we had this year really made me understand a lot more what I was doing with the set-up, how I was setting up the car, which direction I need to go when I get issues. So it’s something that definitely is going to make us stronger come next year.”
Although Perez was championship runner-up, he scored less than half of the points of his title-winning team mate. After his run of success in the first five rounds, he was out-scored by McLaren’s Lando Norris over the rest of the campaign and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc were within 10 points of his tally over that period.
“We’re going to focus massively on making sure we are able to progress with [the car] through the season. I…
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