“Pérez grabbed the opportunity provided by Max’s mechanical mishap”
MARK HUGHES
The scale of Red Bull’s advantage this season had Max Verstappen acknowledging in Jeddah that the world championship is unlikely to go to anyone other than himself or team-mate Sergio Pérez. Having finished second to Pérez in the race, essentially because he had to start 14 places behind him after a driveshaft failure in qualifying, Max was airing his dissatisfaction with the reliability, exactly because it could influence the title outcome.
Could Sergio Pérez, good driver though he is, seriously be considered Verstappen’s title rival? The chances of him outperforming Verstappen over a season have to be considered remote. But that’s an ‘outside looking in’ perspective. There is absolutely no reason why Pérez, as a fully competitive F1 driver, should even begin to think like that – and he’s almost certainly not.