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Red Bull advisor Dr. Helmut Marko feels that swapping Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez during the 2022 F1 Brazilian Grand Prix would have been useless in the championship standings for the latter. While it would have benefitted Checo, it's still hard to say if he would have been ahead of Charles Leclerc in the standings, since a lot of it would still have been dependent upon the final race in Abu Dhabi.
Marko told Sky Deutschland:
“It was a shame with Perez, but if now the question of swapping places in Brazil comes up it would have been useless.”
Agitation emerged amongst Checo's fanbase after the 2022 F1 Brazilian GP when Max Verstappen did not follow the team's orders to let him pass for P6 in the final laps of the race. With the Mexican having helped Verstappen multiple times in the same way, he was expected to do the same to help Sergio Perez with the championship standings. The Dutchman, however, did not and the race ended with Verstappen scoring 8 points and Perez 6. Many believe that if he would have let Perez pass then beating Leclerc for P2 in the standings would have been easier for him. Marko and the data, however, say something different.
Helmut Marko believes that the strategy was right for Sergio Perez in Abu Dhabi
Even if Sergio Perez had scored the P6 position in Brazil, he would still have been a point behind Charles Leclerc in the final standings. If he had, say, scored the fastest lap point, he would still have been equal on points. To get ahead of Leclerc, the only way was to finish a place ahead of him at Yas Marina.
This, however, could not happen because of the strategy the team chose. While Leclerc went ahead on a 1-stop strategy, Perez was called in a second time and given the hard tires, again. Marko felt that the strategy was right, and it was Perez who didn't manage the tires at first.
The Austrian said:
"We actually did everything right in terms of strategy too. It was very tight in the end, but Perez made a mistake in the first phase of the race, he pushed too hard with his tyres and we had to pit him earlier than planned."
Supporting the team's strategy call, team principal Christian Horner too had earlier stated that if Sergio Perez was let go with a single stop, he would have suffered like a 'dying fly' due to reduced grip at the end of the race.
Sergio Perez tried hard to fight Leclerc, but with Lewis Hamilton in front of him, he kept losing time. Though he did come a lot closer to him on the final lap, he could not overtake him. Horner believes that if there was one more lap, Perez 'might' have been ahead. In the end, Leclerc had 308 points and Perez had 305. Note that even if he had the position in Brazil, he would have been on 307 points and 308 with the fastest lap in either of the races. In trying to achieve this, however, he might have lost track position, too.
