Max Verstappen and Checo Perez are best of teammates and friendly rivals, for now. Photo / Don Kennedy
Don Kennedy on Formula One
It has been revealed that Sergio Perez had already signed a new two-year extension to his Red Bull contract, before he won the Monaco Grand Prix. Immediately after that victory, team boss Christian Horner made it clear that Perez only had to "keep on doing what he was doing" for his contract to be extended, which from what we now know wasn't being very forthcoming.
On their way up to the podium, Perez was overheard to say to Horner, "I probably signed too early," suggesting he may have got a better deal given he'd won the race. Horner responded with a chuckle. Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko later confirmed that Perez had signed before the race.
"On the Friday before the Monaco Grand prix we gave him a contract extension," Marko told OE24 in Austria: "He was extra motivated after this. It's very nice to have this duo of drivers. We have already recorded five wins this year."
Perez's third career victory means heading into this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku, a race he won last year. He is only 15 points behind his teammate Max Verstappen, the defending world champion who currently leads the championship from Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, by 9 points. The Red Bull drivers are free to race one another, so does Horner have a potential problem on his hands with both drivers in contention for the world title?
Not according to Horner, or Verstappen.
"He's in this championship just as much as Max is," Horner said after Monaco.
"The difference between them is 15 points or so, now it's nothing, but it's a long way to go in this championship and we can see Ferrari have got a very fast car. They had a better car then us on this circuit this weekend."
Verstappen, who gets on very well with Perez, was asked in the post race press conference in Monaco, if being challenged for the championship by his teammate, will affect their relationship?
"I don't think so, in terms of whether the relationship will change," Verstappen said.
"We have a good…" Perez interrupted him: "We are still going to be in love, right?"
"Yeah, absolutely," Verstappen replied. "Why would that change? We work really well as a team, and we can accept when somebody does a god job or does a better job and I think that's very important because that's how you are respectful to each other."
"Yeah, may the best man win at the end, right?"
"We're always, of course, trying to do the best we can on the track but also respect each other a lot and try to score the most possible points every single weekend for the team."
Horner has had to manage two 'warring' drivers in the past when Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were fighting for the championship in 2010. They were battling Fernando Alonso in the Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren, and each other.
In the Turkish GP, Webber was leading when he was attacked by Vettel. They were side-by-side down the back straight and Vettel appeared to move over and they collided. Vettel's car was damaged beyond repair, but Webber was able to continue and finished third. Vettel completely lost it on the team car radio.
"What the **** are we doing here?" Vettel yelled. "What a stupid action - I'm going home."
Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle said he believed the incident was 100 per cent Vettel's fault as he had turned right into Webber. The latter was later astounded to hear Marko claim, "Vettel had to attack" and blamed Webber.
"When I saw on the TV the hugs Sebastian got on the pit wall from the team, I began having serious doubts as to who was really pulling the strings at Red Bull Racing," Webber later wrote about the incident.
Horner was adamant that they would sort the problem out, but the reality is the two drivers never got on thereafter, and Webber left the team at the end of 2013 and retired. It would not be until an interview in 2020 that he revealed just how toxic his relationship with Vettel was at the time.
Asked if they had their issues out later in 2010, Webber said; "Absolutely not. No chance." "We absolutely overstepped the mark professionally often, and I lost a lot of trust with him on the professional sense. We are pretty tight now, there are messages exchanged so that's gone. I've had enough bottles of red to let that pass on."
Webber said it was a headache for the team because in 2010 they were going for the championship against Hamilton and Alonso.
It had a happy ending for Vettel as he won the last race in Abu Dhabi and took the title by four points from Alonso, with Webber third, and then went on to win the title for the next three seasons. By that stage, Webber was referring to himself as "the number two driver" even though the team insisted they were being treated equally.
"We had a lot of challenging moments mentally and the team started to separate so it was hard for Christian to manage that," Webber added.
Ex F1 driver Jolyon Palmer has doubts that Perez will seriously challenge Verstappen for the title, thus voiding a possible repeat of the Vettel-Webber scenario.
"To be honest, I don't see Perez mounting a championship campaign," Palmer told BBC's Chequered Flag podcast, but did acknowledge that with four podiums in seven races, that team orders like the one imposed on Perez in Spain, will be difficult from now on.
"He's had a much better year and I think that in itself is going to make the team orders less obvious to Red Bull. I know they did it in Barcelona, but there was the split strategies and that was what they pinned it on or blamed it on."
"He's doing a good job. And he was genuinely quicker-Monaco is the outlier of the season though, and it doesn't necessarily guarantee you pace in other places. We've seen that in the past. So, it's a bit of a specialist track."
Marko says while Perez is a championship contender, Verstappen has "self-confidence" and "if you add up the wins now, its quite clear Max is still number one."
Another former F1 driver, Marc Surer, has compared Perez's situation to that of German driver Heinz Harald Frentzen who drove for Jordan in 1999, and was a title contender because of his consistency with fourth and fifth place finishes, as well as two victories which kept him in the title hunt, which was eventually won by Mika Hakkinen in the McLaren, who edged out Ferrari driver Eddie Irvine by just four points. Frentzen finished third, 22 points behind Hakkinen but Surer's point is that Frentzen was not really noticed, "but at the end of the day scoring points is a very important thing."
One driver enjoying the sort of consistency Frentzen had in 1999, is George Russell in the Mercedes. He has finished in the top five in all seven races including two podiums, despite having a car that is sometimes a second a lap slower than the Ferrari or Red Bull. It is an extraordinary performance, given the problems the car presents, with porpoising and poor handling, yet he is 4th in the championship and 34 points ahead of his teammate Hamilton, a seven-time world champion.
Former team owner and now an F1 pundit, Eddie Jordan, was asked if Russell deserved to get the Mercedes drive?
"Absolutely, I think the big surprise is, everybody globally, in Formula 1 context, think that Lewis Hamilton is top dog," Jordan said.
"But he's no longer top dog, not even in the team because Russell has taken his perch away. And I think its very interesting to watch and I want to see how Lewis is going to overcome that."
Jordan is also keeping an eye on Daniel Ricciardo's precarious situation at McLaren, with any number of drivers being linked to replace the eight-time race winner, whose slump in form continued at Monaco where he finished 13th, whereas is teammate Lando Norris was 6th. Norris also has 48 championship points compared to 11 for Ricciardo.
"I think I'd be watching his career path from now on, because I'm not sure how much further he can go," Jordan posted on twitter.
"Lando is destroying him, mentally, physically and on the track. He needs to shake it up immediately."
Perez won in Baku last year, but only because Verstappen had a tyre explode when he had a handy lead, with three laps to go, and on the re-start, Hamilton locked up and flat-spotted his tyres and missed the first corner. Vettel finished second for Aston Martin and Pierre Gasly in the Alpha Tauri was third. It is unlikely that will be the podium his year, although since the event began in 2016, there has been no repeat winner.
Nico Rosberg won for Mercedes in 2016, Ricciardo for Red Bull in 2017, with Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas winning for Mercedes in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The Covid pandemic meant there was no race in 2020.
Ferrari will be desperate to make up for their strategic mistake in Monaco, while Red Bull will want to consolidate their lead in both the drivers and constructors' championships. Horner posted on twitter: "It doesn't matter to us which of the two is world champion. But whether its Max or Checo, they are both Red Bull drivers and they both have the same chances…it's great to have both drivers right at the sharp end."
Great for now, but Horner probably said something similar in 2010, so Baku will be watched with great interest for a number of reasons.
- Sources: Red Bull Racing; F1.com