Speed Secrets: Is Sergio Perez Maxed Out?

The strange case of Sergio Perez’s inconsistent performance and how he can compete with Max Verstappen.

As the Formula One teams and drivers head into their summer break, there’s a lot of talk and rumors about Sergio Perez’s future with Red Bull. So, I thought I’d share my two cents worth….

You could make the argument that 2023 is Sergio Perez’s best season in Formula One, ever. After all, he’s won two races and sits second in the World Championship. Heʻs also put more pressure on his teammate, Max Verstappen, than any other driver has been able to. But you could also make the case that it’s his worst season ever.

Inconsistent is perhaps the best word to describe Sergio Perez’s season up to the summer break.

But why?

Success often leads to contentment. Could Perez’s success early in the season have led to him sitting back and taking for granted that he was as good as Verstappen, and there’s been some amount of slacking off? It is possible, but I don’t think that’s what happened.

Instead, I believe Sergio Perez’s problems are on the other end of the spectrum from being too comfortable. He has tried too hard. If you’ve ever swung a tennis racquet, golf club, or baseball bat, you know that swinging harder rarely leads to the result you want. In fact, you’re more likely to miss the ball altogether.

Perez’s early success led to him focusing on the results. That led to more pressure, the kind that he mostly put on himself. That led to him trying harder, which led to mistakes. And the more he tried not to make mistakes, the more he made.

Digging deeper, how often have you seen an athlete on the verge of making a big break, only to fail at the last moment? It happens more often than any athlete would like to admit. The reason is that someone like Perez doesn’t have the mental programming to go along with consistently winning, and being in the championship hunt. As much as he can tell himself that he belongs on the top of the podium and will win the World Championship, I suspect that deep down inside he doesn’t really believe it.

To say that Perez has had pressure put on him this year is an understatement. Yes, some of that has been self-inflicted, but the media and his own team have done nothing but add to it.

For all the money that F1 teams spend – some $135 million this year – it’s surprising how little is spent on engineering the human who is rotating the steering wheel and doing the delicate footwork with the pedals. As I wrote in my piece about Guenther Steiner (Steiner is Toxic), some teams actively do things to bring out the worst in drivers. From what I’ve observed from a distance, I think Christian Horner does a good job of managing the performance of Verstappen and Perez, and I’d like to think it’s reasonably equal (but I suspect not totally equal). But I can’t say that about Helmut Marko.

It may even be that Marko has contributed to Sergio Perez’s inconsistent performances.

It seems to me that Marko’s management style (the style he uses to bring out the “best” performance of those around him) is the old carrot and stick approach. Unfortunately, he hasn’t spent much time in the garden pulling carrots, so he pretty much always uses the stick.

I’m not saying that drivers (and other people) don’t need to be told in a direct way what to do at times, but it should be focused on what to do, and not on what not to do.

For example, instead of Marko setting up scenarios where Checo would get the message that if he didn’t improve, he would be replaced by Daniel Ricciardo/Yuki Tsunoda/Liam Lawson/whoever, and ultimately leading to Perez focusing more on the results, feeling the pressure, making more mistakes, and performing worse, what if there was a conversation along the lines of:

“Checo, at the beginning of this season you were focused on performing at your best, and that’s all. You won a couple of races, and competed closely with your teammate. Not only that, but your confidence level was skyrocketing, and you were performing at your best. You were on an upward spiral.

After the first four races you were right there with Max in the World Championship, and that became your focus – the results, and not simply performing at your best. When you focused on winning, on points, on the championship, your performance began to suffer. So, you pushed harder, and in doing so, you made mistakes. That’s when the spiral tipped and aimed downward.”

So, rather than focusing on the results, and on NOT making mistakes, go back to focusing on simply performing at your best. Make learning and improving your objective. In doing so, you will perform better… and who knows where you’ll be in the championship, although we know it will be better than you’ve shown over the past few races.”

Going into the summer break, take some time to think about how well you’ve performed up against the best driver in F1 right now, and perhaps one of the best ever. You were right there with him, pushing him to be his best. And you beat him a couple of times. You have the ability, you just need to let it come through… as you have at times in the past.”

And don’t forget, you have a multiple-time World Champion to compare yourself to and learn from. Take advantage of that, and use it as a way of upping your own best performance. There’s a reason you’re a Red Bull driver – it’s because we know you can do the job.”

I suspect that is a very different message than the one Sergio Perez has been hearing for the past three months.

Now that the pressure is off Checo, since it’s highly unlikely he could catch Max in the championship, I predict we’ll see more of what we saw from him early in the season. I’m not sure he will be as good as he was, because some of his confidence has been chipped away. But don’t be surprised if he is within hundredths of a second of his teammate in qualifying, and has an honest shot at winning another race or two before the end of the season.

Other than Daniel Ricciardo (for obvious reasons), I know that would make a lot of people very happy.

What do you think? What would help Checo perform the way he did at the beginning of this season?