Sergio Perez’s career-endangering struggle with the 2024 Red Bull car "wasn’t always his fault".
That’s the view of Max Verstappen, who is facing the prospect of a new teammate for next year after Red Bull failed to win the constructors’ championship by a whopping 77 points.
"That was a total failure for us," said reigning four-time drivers’ title winner Verstappen, speaking in an end-of-year interview with Viaplay.
"It was difficult for Checo, but it wasn’t always his fault. We simply had a very difficult car at times."
Top Red Bull officials are being very open about their deliberations to oust Perez, amid raging speculation of negotiations to end the Mexican’s valid 2025 contract.
"We will be announcing news in the next few days about what the driver pairing will look like next year," team advisor Dr Helmut Marko wrote in his new column for Speed Week.
"There is a lot of speculation, including about transfer fees that are being mentioned that are complete nonsense," the Austrian added.
Yuki Tsunoda thinks his and Liam Lawson’s chances of being promoted to the senior team are "50-50".
Verstappen said of Perez: "I don’t want to put him down, because he’s my teammate and I get along very well with him. But I can also clearly say that not everything was his fault about how things went wrong.
"The biggest problem we had is that the car sometimes didn’t work," the Dutchman continued. "I know what Checo’s driving style is, and the car that we had at one point was just very difficult to drive, also for me. That doesn’t help, of course.
"We should have started working on that sooner, because that would have helped him a lot too.
"At the start of the season he was often second or third," Verstappen, 27, continued, still referring to Perez. "That was fine, but at a certain point it just became very difficult.
"Your confidence can then take a hit. Some people are a bit more sensitive to that than others," he added. "But I think that as a team we didn’t always do that well."