The 2023 Singapore Grand Prix marks the one-year anniversary of arguably Sergio Pérez’s best performance with Red Bull Racing.
Similar to this year, in 2022 Pérez arrived in Marina Bay off the back of an ordinary run of form, having picked up just one podium from the previous six races.
Teammate Max Verstappen, meanwhile, had just enjoyed a dominant European campaign to earn his first shot at sealing the title.
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But on a weekend Verstappen — and his side of the garage, it must be said — faltered, Pérez lived up to his reputation as a street-circuit specialist to salvage the weekend for Red Bull Racing.
He came within 0.022 seconds of snatching pole from Charles Leclerc in a tricky wet-dry qualifying hour, but he didn’t need top spot come the race.
Following a monumental downpour, Pérez seized the lead into the first turn and held off advances from Leclerc in what was then a faster Ferrari car.
Conditions were treacherous, but the Mexican was faultless on his way to victory.
It was the sort of race that reminded you why Pérez had been picked up by the team in the first place. While Verstappen flipped and slid his way to seventh, Checo was in place to pick up the pieces with a calm, composed and assured drive. It felt like he’d taken the next step of his Red Bull Racing career.
It was tempting to believe it was a crucial bit of momentum for Pérez heading into this season, and his classy victories in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan earlier this year suggested as much.
But Pérez has been nowhere since then.
Again, similar to last year, he arrives in Singapore this weekend having been belted by Verstappen, whose advantage not just in points but also in pace has ballooned the longer the season has gone on.
Last year the story was similar, with the team suggesting that its first car developed under the new regulations had ended up further away from Pérez’s driving style by the end of the year.
But it would appear to have happened two season in a row, and with Verstappen on a tear at the front of the field, some have speculated that the car is being built just for him at the expense of getting the most out of Pérez.
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Pérez himself has said that his perception of the way the team had gone about things in previous years had been to field a second driver alongside Verstappen only because the regulations require it.
Several times this season he’s said that the RB19 has been developed in a way that has taken it further from his preferred driving style, the suggestion being that the latest-spec version of the car has been built to Verstappen’s taste rather than his own after an even start to the campaign between the two teammates.
“For a driver it’s really difficult to be adapting to the car instead of just things coming naturally,” he told Sky Sports.
“The last few races I’ve been a step or two behind and always thinking consciously how I have to drive the car.
“Sometimes with how the car has been developed [it] doesn’t really suit me as much, so I have to work harder for it.”
Speaking at the previous race in Italy, Pérez admitted he had work to do to come to grips with the developing car.
“I think every driver through their career or through each season get some upgrades to the car that adapt easier to your driving style than others,” he said. “Sometimes you will put a part in it and you will straight away go faster with it. Sometimes you will have to adapt to it.
“I haven‘t been able to adapt as quickly as I should, and I had to change my driving style a bit to adapt into the car more than in the beginning of the season, for example, when things were coming more naturally.”
SLOW AND STEADY DOESN’T WIN THE RACE
In the two races since the break, Pérez has qualified seventh and fifth. In the Netherlands he was a whopping 1.313 seconds slower than Verstappen around a 70-second lap.
Zandvoort was one of a few results this year where the margin between teammates in the best car on the grid has been close to inexplicably large.
“I mean, Checo is not an idiot,” Toto Wolff mused afterwards, per The Race. “We have seen in all these years. Checo is a grand prix winner — a multiple grand prix winner — and he was [already a winner] at Racing Point.
“So I cannot comprehend.
“We’ve seen Max has destroyed every single teammate that was with him, whether it’s his ability to create a car around himself that is just very tricky to control — but fast if you can [control it] — and that makes those gaps.
“The 1.3 seconds — I haven’t heard any obvious explanations. But odd.”
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But the idea that the car has been created around Verstappen exclusively earnt a rebuke from Red Bull Racing principal Christian Horner.
“It shows a total lack of understanding of how a race car and team develop, if Toto thinks that we’re developing a car around a single driver,” Horner said.
“You develop a car to be as quick as you can, and sometimes quick cars are difficult cars — that’s what’s historically been the case — and I think that drivers adapt.
“The good drivers that you see in wet conditions, mixed conditions, varied conditions — the elite — they adapt quickly, and I think one of [Verstappen’s] key skill sets is his ability to adapt to the feeling and the grip levels that a car gives him.
“There’s certainly no direction to say, ‘Oh, we tailor something to suit one specific driver’. We’re just trying to design and build the fastest car that we can, that our tools, our simulation or our wind tunnel provide us with that direction.”
Verstappen denied that he was having any undue influence on the direction of the car beyond giving regular driver feedback.
“I just drive the car I get the fastest way possible,” he said, per RaceFans. “I’m not there to tell the guys to give me more front end because that’s how I like it; I just say, ‘Design me the fastest car and I’ll drive around that’.
“Every single year it’s just different. Every car drives a little bit different. People will say, ‘What is your driving style?’. My driving style is not something particular. I adapt to what I need for the car to go quick.”
WHY THE ONE-DRIVER TEAM THEORY MAKES NO SENSE — BUT…
With all that said, while Red Bull Racing may not be building the car exclusively for Verstappen, the faster driver’s feedback at any team is always going to carry more weight. The faster the driver, the closer they’re getting to the car’s theoretical performance limit, the better the validation for the designers, who in turn generate the next upgrade package based on that feedback loop.
There’s nothing underhanded about it. It’s just the most efficient way to build a better car.
That does come with risks, however.
The most obvious example of the danger of having a lopsided driver line-up is in MotoGP, where for the better part of the last decade Honda has been designing its bikes around Marc Márquez’s supernatural abilities.
Márquez broke his arm in 2020 and spent significant time off the bike in the following seasons. The manufacturer lost its way attempting to adapt the machinery to new riders, and the once-dominant marque is now languishing at the bottom of the manufacturers standings.
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It’s difficult to draw parallels when Pérez is second in the drivers championship, but the same risk exists in F1 for teams that end up too focused, by accident or design, around one superstar.
But the more extreme speculation about Red Bull Racing’s approach to its drivers is clearly unfounded.
It’s inconceivable the team would be paying Pérez handsomely — along with his team of engineers and mechanics — just to waste time pootling around racetracks every other week.
That idea disregards the fact that Red Bull Racing is desperate to record its first-ever one-two finish in the drivers championship now that both titles are as good as sewn up.
And you only need to look at the case of Aston Martin to know what’s at stake for a team with a lopsided driver line-up, whether wilful or otherwise. The Silverstone team would be comfortably second in the constructors championship if Lance Stroll were scoring anywhere nearly as heavily as Fernando Alonso. Instead it’s languishing fourth and dropping further behind every week.
True, Verstappen would be leading the constructors standings all on his own, but that’s unlikely to be the case again next year, or so we’d all hope.
All this only reminds us just how good Verstappen is. He’s proved for years he’s able to adapt to RBR’s trickiest cars and make the most of his chances. His teammates haven’t stood a chance not because the team is too focused around the Dutchman but because they haven’t been at a level to draw the focus away.