Perez Under Fire: Albers Questions His Red Bull Seat for 2024
Nov.28 - A regular critic of Max Verstappen's Red Bull teammate has taken the opportunity to once again slam Sergio Perez.
Christijan Albers, Dutch like Verstappen, claims the 2023 season finale in Abu Dhabi is yet more evidence that Mexican driver Perez should be ousted.
He says his collision with Lando Norris at the 2023 season finale in Abu Dhabi proves that Red Bull should be on the lookout for a better driver to be paired with the ultra-dominant Verstappen.
"Norris couldn't go anywhere," he told De Telegraaf. "He got a fright and couldn't do anything.
"It was going well for Perez at the beginning of the season, when the difference was still about 5-6 tenths to Max. Then we saw him just fade away."
Albers, who raced for Spyker and Minardi, claims that "If Red Bull builds a car that is that good and then you have Perez, then you really have a problem as a team".
He says the way Perez was overtaken on the last laps in both Brazil and Las Vegas proves that a driver is "not worth putting in such a good car".
"I quietly think that there is so much money behind Perez from his sponsors. Ok, it's Red Bull, but it's still nice if you're raking in 40, 50 million," said Albers.
And he warned that if Red Bull's rivals really do put better cars on the grid for 2024, the Milton Keynes based team "will really have a problem if they've built a car that is capable of racing them".
"Then they'd have to put all their cards on Max, and that may not be good for the team," said Albers.
Perez is powerfully backed by Mexican sponsors including Interproteccion, Telmex, Infintium and Claro - many of the energy drink-owned and branded team's top backers.
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Once again, he isn't under threat until at least further into the season, depending on his performance level.
The last paragraph is pointless because Red Bull has never cared about external factors in their driver choices, as they've always been among the biggest-budgeted teams.
If MV is happy with a substandard 2nd driver then that's enough for Horner. Only problem is it's robbing us of a half decent season of proper racing for 1st place.
Being second in the WDC is hardly substandard
Stop talking shite
It's no problem winning the Constructors and coming first and second in the Drivers.
Its well known the car's config at the start of the season suited Checo much more than Max, when it was biased to Max's liking , it took Checo a while to learn how to drive that new setting and struggled badly but he came back.
Had it been the other way, could have Max done it?
I read that when Checo asked for the last 3 races to have the setting reset the way it was at the start of the season so he could become more competitive again, RB did not comply and argued that they couln't have 2 different setting in their cars...
Yes