Red Bull driver Sergio Perez says he is confident of being a stronger driver in 2024 after learning “a lot” from his challenges in 2023.
Perez took a career best finish of second in the drivers’ championship behind team mate Max Verstappen last year but his season was plagued with mistakes, frustrations and disappointing results.
He won just two grands prix all season – both in the opening four rounds – while Verstappen dominated the championship with 19 victories from the other 20 events. He endured a run of five consecutive rounds without reaching Q3 between Monaco and Silverstone and only scored one podium finish over the final eight rounds of the season, finishing with under half Verstappen’s points total despite claiming second in the standings.
“I think I had some really difficult times for a few months, let’s put it that way,” Perez told select media including RaceFans. “I went from fighting for the championship to be really on a difficult boat and really not having that confidence with the car. When that happens, it’s really difficult as a driver to really exploit it all. So that was becoming a bit of a limitation.”
Perez admitted that he took some time following the Qatar Grand Prix – where he was classified tenth after multiple track limits penalties as Verstappen won from pole – to sit down in Red Bull’s Milton Keynes factory and work through the data with his team to analyse why he was at such a performance deficit to his team mate.
“It was such a hole this year that we really got together after Qatar and we understood a lot of things we were doing with the car,” he said. “So I think that has been really, really good on our side. I mean, it was bad that it happened, but in a way it was really good because it really strengthened up our team quite a lot.
“Because Qatar was really the worst weekend that I remember in a while in the sport, probably my worst weekend ever in the sport. It was such a bad weekend that I really felt like ‘I cannot be this bad, there’s something else going on’. So we really took the time to understand what was going on with the car quite a lot.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
With Red Bull replacing AlphaTauri driver Nyck de Vries with reserve driver and veteran Daniel Ricciardo midway through the season, media speculation began to grow over whether Perez’s seat at Red Bull Racing may be in question, despite his contract for 2024. Although team principal…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…