Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff says the performance gap at Red Bull Racing between Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez is hard to understand.
After trading wins with Verstappen in the first four races of the season, Perez endured a significant slump that started in Monaco and from which the Mexican has only partially recovered.
Perez's blunder in Q1 in the Principality triggered a downward spiral that weighed on his results in the following races, not to mention that it thwarted his title chances as Verstappen sailed to consecutive wins.
Perez enjoyed an upswing of sorts in Belgium where he qualified third, but in Zandvoort this weekend he was once again well adrift from his teammate, clocking in 1.3s behind the Flying Dutchman in Q3 on Saturday.
For many, that performance was just par for the course, but for Wolff it's an oddity.
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"I mean, Checo is not an idiot," he said, quoted by The Race.
"We have seen in all these years. Checo is a grand prix winner, a multiple grand prix winner. And he was [already a winner] at Racing Point.
"So I cannot comprehend.
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"I mean, we’ve seen Max has destroyed every single team-mate that was with him, whether it’s his ability to create a car around himself that is just very tricky to control – but fast if you can [control it] – and that makes those gaps.
"The 1.3s. I haven’t heard any obvious explanations. But… odd."
After Saturday's qualifying, Perez invoked – and not for the first time – the challenging wet-to-dry conditions that prevailed in the session, but he also felt that a double-push strategy in Q3 had perhaps not been optimal.
Commenting on his driver's performance, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner felt that Perez had given it his best shot in the challenging conditions.
©RedBull
"It’s the same for everybody – you’ve just got to go out there and feel the grip and put a lap in, and for whatever reason he hasn’t quite had the confidence that. you know, certainly Max has," he said.
"I don’t think anybody has had the confidence that Max has.
"So a harder session for him [Perez] but there’s others around him that have struggled. I didn’t expect Oscar [Piastri], for example, to be behind him."
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