Max Verstappen’s ‘biggest strength’ named by F1 teammate Sergio Perez

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F1 star Sergio Perez named some of his teammate Max Verstappen’s biggest strengths.

The pair were utterly dominant last season, winning 17 of the 22 races and registering 759 points en route to a comfortable constructors title victory. But it was the Dutchman who was the superior Red Bull driver, winning an astonishing 15 races and wrapping up a comfortable drivers title defence.

Perez, 33, who won just two Grand Prix races in 2022, has been hard at work in the offseason with the goal to improve his consistency in a bid to challenge his champion teammate. Speaking in the drivers’ press conference during the first day of pre-season testing, Perez praised the abilities of Verstappen after achieving his best ever championship finishing position of third last season.

“Certainly I want to improve what I had last year,” he said. “I want to go to another step and become a more complete driver in all regards in order to make the next two steps in my championship. Being Max’s team mate is quite a challenge. He’s just very complete, hardly makes mistakes.

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“I think that’s one of his strengths, that he’s able to be at the limit for a very long time during a weekend. That’s one of the biggest strengths that he has.” Early last season, Red Bull experienced some reliability issues, with both drivers suffering DNFs.

But they quickly improved the car, in particular its front-end grip, something Verstappen was able to use to his advantage compared to his team-mate. The Mexican admitted the 25-year-old did a better job of exploiting the oversteer-prone balance the car developed over the course of the season.

“I would say that definitely there are very few drivers that like understeer,” Perez added. “I think there’s not many drivers that like it. From my point of view, I just think Max is able to cope with a less stable rear end [better] than I am able to cope.

“But at the end of the day, we both want a good front end. It’s just the question of how stable the rear end can be. And certainly Max has been able to cope with a looser rear end.” Verstappen set the pace with the fastest time as 2023 pre-season testing commenced on Thursday.

The Dutchman would go on to end the day at the top of the leaderboard with a time of 1:32.837, with Fernando Alonso and the pair of Ferrari stars Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc behind him. Perez did not take part in the opening day of testing in Bahrain, along with Alonso’s Aston Martin team-mate Lance Stroll, who is out due to injury.

Following Verstappen clocking the fastest lap time, the four-time F1 race winner is confident in his Red Bull team and the car they have manufactured for the 2023 season. “We were really working hard with the team to try and improve the car that we had last year,” Perez said.

“Certainly everyone is working really hard and you see that the competition is a lot tighter already this morning. It’s very difficult to measure where we really are compared to the others, but we certainly had a good start.”

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