Max Verstappen’s teammate perhaps holds the most challenging Formula 1 role according to Sergio Perez’s viral interview on Red Bull struggles, as he lays bare the intense pressure that defined his tenure with the team.
In a recent appearance on the Cracks Podcast hosted by Oswaldo “Oso” Trava, the Mexican driver, affectionately known as Checo, opened up about the internal dynamics, car development issues, and relentless scrutiny that defined his four-year stint with the team from 2021 to 2024.
This interview comes as Perez prepares for his return to the F1 grid with the new Cadillac F1 Team, marking a fresh chapter after being ousted from Red Bull at the end of 2024 despite a multi-year contract.
Perez’s reputation as a reliable performer after stints with Force India/Racing Point, McLaren and Sauber earned him the coveted seat alongside Max Verstappen in 2021, replacing Alexander Albon after a season of inconsistency.
The 35-year old driver recounted his initial meeting with Red Bull’s team principal at the time Christian Horner, who was blunt about the team’s structure and car development revolving around Verstappen as the lead talent.
“I knew what I was getting into,” Perez said. “This project is built for Max. When I first sat down with Christian, he told me: ‘Look, we’re going to race with two cars because we have to race with two cars. But this project has been created for Max. Max is our talent.’
“It’s like if Carlos Slim builds a team and I’m his driver, right? And you hire a Dutch guy. So it’s the same thing. That’s what I was stepping into, and I was very aware of it.
“I told him: ‘It doesn’t matter. In this team I’m going to develop the car, I’m going to support the car, I’m going to support the team.'”
His debut year exceeded expectations: he finished fourth in the Drivers’ Championship with 190 points, including podiums in Turkey, France, Azerbaijan, Mexico, and the United States, plus a heroic win in Azerbaijan after Verstappen’s tire failure handed him the lead.
The 2022 season elevated Perez to new heights, arguably his pinnacle at Red Bull. He outpaced Verstappen in simulator sessions early on as the RB18 initially featured a heavier weight distribution that suited his smooth driving style—favoring stability over peak agility.
However, as the season progressed upgrades were funneled toward Verstappen’s preferences, which Perez believes directly contributed to his own dip in form, a pattern that repeated in subsequent years.
“I remember that in the simulator I was faster than Max, and I was already arriving at the race weekends thinking about winning the race, and everything came automatically,” Perez recalled.
“And then we had a car that maybe wasn’t so much in Max’s style, and in 2022 I started fighting for the championship with him until the upgrades arrived.
“When the upgrades arrived, there was a very clear direction in which the team has to go, and that’s when I started to have problems.”
“The same happened in 2023. When we got to Barcelona, from fighting at the front, I went to being a second per lap slower. I no longer had control of the car.
“So then all this pressure starts. All this pressure, which was very hard because, well, the one at fault is the driver, right? Because you’re not focused, because you’re doing too many commercials, or because you’re involved in other things.”
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Perez detailed on the podcast how the team complained about everything following his performance dip: “At Red Bull, everything was a problem. If I was very fast, it was a problem because it created a very tense atmosphere at Red Bull.
“If I was faster than Max, it was a problem. If I was slower than Max, it was a problem. So everything was a problem.”
Among the most striking revelations in Sergio Perez’s viral interview on Red Bull struggles was the push to seek psychological help early in his tenure after a run of dismal results.
“As soon as I arrived at Red Bull, in the first races when I didn’t get results, they told me: ‘What you need is a psychologist. You have to see a psychologist’,” Perez said. “It was six thousand pounds for one call!”
The 2024 season proved Perez’s nadir at Red Bull, starting strong with podiums but unraveling into a nightmare of qualifying woes and crashes.
The team axed him mid-contract in late 2024, replacing him with Liam Lawson for 2025, who lasted only two races before Yuki Tsunoda took over, only for Isack Hadjar to step in as Verstappen’s teammate for 2026 amid the turmoil—including Horner’s and Helmut Marko’s departures.
“We had the best team,” Perez said. “Unfortunately, everything was destroyed. We had the team to have dominated the next ten years in F1, I believe, and unfortunately, everything came to an end.
“A complicated team, right? because just being Max Verstappen’s teammate is extremely difficult, but being Max’s teammate at Red Bull is the hardest job there is in Formula 1, by far.”
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