Miami Grand Prix: Sergio Perez to achieve perfection to defeat a teammate, Max Verstappen to title
Posted : 05 May 2023
In order to defeat Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen and win the championship this year, Sergio Perez thinks he must be "perfect."
With two victories apiece, Perez and Verstappen are six points apart going into this weekend's Miami Grand Prix.
The only way Perez could defeat Max was to perform flawlessly and deliver when it mattered.
He said that fighting for the title is a great joy since it's what you've been working toward your entire life.
Verstappen is the top driver for Red Bull, makes several times more money than Perez, and has a deal that lasts until 2028 rather than 2024.
The Mexican claimed he was convinced that the team would give him the support he needed to combat Verstappen, although Red Bull has indicated that the two are free to race as long as they put the company's interests first.
"I do believe that the team will give me as much support as they do with Max and what they have been doing since the start of the season," Perez said.
"In that regard, we have to appreciate that a lot from Red Bull. It would be very easy to implement orders from lap 20 and [say] look after the cars and make sure we have reliable cars.
"But in Jeddah and Baku we pushed flat out throughout the race and in Baku we each hit the wall a few times because we were so on the limit. It could easily [cause] damage and we could easily have a problem."
Last year, there was tension between the two drivers as Verstappen began to suspect Perez of intentionally crashing on his final lap of qualifying in Monaco to deny his teammate the chance to overtake him.
But Perez insisted: "The level of respect between Max and myself and the engineers is pretty high, although people might think differently. I am sure the team feels super-confident to let us race as hard as we have been doing."
Verstappen won his second championship last year by setting a new mark of 15 victories in a season, whereas Perez only managed two.
Perez claimed that he had put in a lot of effort during the winter to learn how to maximize the potential of the Red Bull vehicle.
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