What Sergio Perez needs to do to get better F1 treatment from Red Bull
- Posted by storm on Aug 28, 2023
It’s understandable that the way Red Bull handled its drivers’ race strategies in F1's Dutch Grand Prix might have upset some people. But Sergio Perez has the power to prevent things like this happening.
At Zandvoort, Perez made the right call at the start of the race to pit for intermediate tyres as soon as the rain hit, and his reward was the race lead once everybody else had come in. Suddenly another poor qualifying on Saturday was a distant memory.
But then, when it was time to switch back to slicks a few laps later, Red Bull decided to pit Max Verstappen first, when he was running second to Perez. Perez then came in a lap later, and sounded surprised to see that his team-mate had got ahead of him by pitting earlier - known in F1 as an ‘undercut’.
Inevitably this sparked some conspiracy theories about how Red Bull had shafted Perez to get Verstappen back ahead at his home grand prix, which he went on to win for the third year in a row.
There will always be that nagging doubt of i