F1 News: David Coulthard Casts Doubt On Sergio Perez's Championship Chances - "Difficult For Him To Beat Max"
Former F1 driver David Coulthard has spoken about the chances of Red Bull's Sergio Perez winning a championship, casting doubt on the Mexican drivers prospects.
Perez had four race wins during 2022 and narrowly missed out on second place in the driver's championship to Ferrari's Charles Leclerc. Despite this, Coulthard explained during the Lion Unleashed 2 documentary that he does not think Perez will ever take a championship win. He said:
“[Red Bull] had the best package in racing, they made better strategic decisions. Reliability has played for them at the right part of the year.
“Checo, although he of course dreams of being world champion, of course he believes when everything is working, he has the pace to beat Max. He’s also mature enough to realise that it’s pretty difficult for him to beat Max over a season."
Perez is still an integral part of the Red Bull team with his own successes and also with aiding teammate and current champion Max Verstappen.
We did see some friction within the team at the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2022 when Perez was instructed to let Verstappen past him in the latter stages of the race in order to try and take some points away from Fernando Alonso and Charles Leclerc. However, this was on the proviso that Verstappen would give the place back to Perez before the end of the race. Fans could hear the Red Bull team instructing Verstappen to give the place back but the Belgian-Dutch driver ignored the team.
No one from the Red Bull team revealed why Verstappen decided to ignore the team instructions afterwards but they agreed it has been resolved behind closed doors. The situation didn't seem to make sense to the fans as Verstappen had already won the championship at this point and was not in line to finish on the podium, whereas, Perez was still competing against Leclerc for second place in the championship.