F1 News: Red Bull Engineer Acknowledges Difference Between Sergio Perez's And Max Verstappen's RB19
Red Bull Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan has acknowledged that the differences between Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez's RB19 F1 cars are a lot less than they were in 2021. The minor differences between the two cars however zero down to the drivers' preferences.
Despite Verstappen winning 12 of the 14 races this season, including the record for the last ten consecutive Grand Prix wins, Perez sailed through the rough sea as he struggled with the car before the summer break.
Listen To The Latest Driven Mad Podcast Episode
However, the difference in performance of both drivers has nothing to do with their cars since they are the same for both drivers. Red Bull had brushed away comments earlier suggesting that the RB19 is solely designed around Verstappen's style and preference.
Monaghan reveals that both cars had more differences in 2021 than they have today. However, there is nothing unusual about the minor differences. When asked if both drivers required setups that were vastly different, He told RacingNews365:
"Drivers in my experience always want subtle changes or subtle differences across the garage and that's nothing unusual.
"[Sergio] is quite close to Max with this car in terms of his set-up preferences and his choices. It makes it a little bit easier going forward with this one.
"His approach to it is very similar to Max, the differences are so small and with this car I'd say it's perhaps less than 2021 car.
"So no, in answer to your question, is it broadly different? No, they're very close."
One win at a time strategy
Monaghan added that the team prefers to follow the one race-at-a-time strategy which got them 15 wins this season. Revealing that it would be wrong to rely on what they've already achieved. He said:
"Because we're in a competitive environment and you're dealing with short-term problems of the P1 session, what do we do for P2, P3.
"How are we going to approach qualifying? What's the weather like?
"It would be wrong of us to rest on what we've achieved so far. We want to keep going. And the only way to do that is to treat each race as an individual competition and we've got to push ourselves to get the most out of ourselves the car, the drivers, if we're going to stay ahead."
