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Sergio Perez has come in for criticism for misplaced priorities while driving alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull. The Mexican driver has been going through a poor run of form ever since he won the race in Baku. He has since struggled a lot to put together laps strong enough in qualifying.
As a result, he's been cornered into doing salvage jobs in the race and more often than not, they have not materialized into great results. To make things worse, Perez's potential replacement Daniel Ricciardo put together a splendid weekend in Mexico and put even more pressure on the Mexican.
Martin Brundle feels one of the reasons behind this is misplaced priorities for Sergio Perez as he's trying hard to beat Max Verstappen.
Brundle said on Sky Sports telecast:
“Sergio needs to, firstly, be on the back of Verstappen’s gearbox at the end of the race; secondly, win the races Verstappen doesn’t; and thirdly, think about beating Verstappen. He’s doing it the other way around.”
Talking about the crash that Perez had in Mexico on the very first lap, Brundle felt that it looked like an act of desperation more than anything else.
“He’s had a few, hasn’t he? Everybody cut him a lot of slack there and wanted him to do well at the Mexican Grand Prix. He was under a lot of pressure coming into that race and the crowd were cheering him every time he went through a corner," he said.
“There is a large element there of: ‘What on earth were you thinking of, Sergio, turning in that hard, that early, assuming that drivers like Leclerc and Verstappen would have been breaking early?’ There was an element of desperation," Brundle added.
"You can't just turn in": Martin Brundle on Sergio Perez's contact in Mexico
Explaining further what happened, Martin Brundle said that Sergio Perez was trying to emulate the overtake that Max Verstappen had pulled off in 2021.
In 2021, Verstappen went around the outside of both Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton at the start of the race, helping the Dutchman secure a win.
Talking about Perez's incident with Charles Leclerc in Mexico, Brundle felt that the moment got to the driver as the overtake was just not on.
"He realised he was just slightly ahead going in there after a tremendous start. Read the racetrack well, got himself on the left-hand side – as we’ve seen Verstappen do [in 2021] when he passed both Mercedes going in there. Now he’s on the grippy racing line with a wider run into the corner, but you have to do a bit of a ‘wall a death’ around the outside. You can’t just turn in," he said.
“And I even wonder, if Leclerc wasn’t there, whether him and Max would have made contact eventually. He was turning in really hard. So I think the moment got to Sergio and he made two critical mistakes when he got there. [It was] the last thing he needed," Brundle added.
Sergio Perez will start the 2023 F1 Brazilian GP in P9 after another disappointing qualifying session. The Mexican driver has not had a good run lately and that will only end up putting even more pressure on him
