Max Verstappen has no obvious weaknesses, Sergio Perez claims

The Red Bull pair took podium spots at the Turkish Grand Prix

Karl Matchett
Friday 15 October 2021 11:24 BST
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Red Bull racer Sergio Perez has praised the all-round ability of his team-mate Max Verstappen, saying he can’t pick out a single weakness in his approach.

The Mexican joined his current team from Racing Point - now Aston Martin - for this season and has performed largely well recently, winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and clocking up 135 championship points to lie in fifth in the driver standings, with six rounds to go.

He also earned the acclaim of Verstappen recently after holding off Lewis Hamilton at the Turkish Grand Prix, finishing third in the process with his Dutch team-mate in second, Verstappen then leap-frogging Hamilton to the top of the driver standings.

But Perez has pointed out that Verstappen being such a natural and so at-ease with the Red Bull car has both positives and negatives, as he deals with his own acclimatisation period after switching to the team.

“It’s not easy being Max’s team-mate because he’s at one with the car,” said Perez. “He’s really delivering at a very high level.

“I had a difficult process to adapt to the car, but nothing too dramatic. It’s obviously a very good package and a very competitive one and Max is showing that this car is, if not the best, one of the best out there.”

Expanding further on how good he thinks Verstappen is, Perez didn’t hold back in his praise, saying he makes the fewest errors on the grid and saying he has “been the driver of the season so far”.

“I think he has done the least mistakes of anyone out there. He’s put things together at a very high level.

“The season, it’s still very long so we’ll see later on, so far I have been surprised in a very positive way on how he delivers without mistakes at such a high level.”

“I’ll have to think about it [if he has any weaknesses], but I don’t really think there are. Not obvious ones, yet.”

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