Sergio Perez has finally lifted the lid on what life was really like inside Red Bull Racing — and his account paints a picture of a team where tension simmered regardless of performance, and where simply being Max Verstappen’s team-mate felt like a losing battle from day one.
Speaking candidly on the Cracks Podcast, the Mexican driver reflected on a four-year stint that began with promise and podiums, but gradually descended into frustration, pressure and, ultimately, exile.
Perez arrived at Red Bull in 2021 as an experienced race winner, quickly delivering results alongside Verstappen. But even as success followed, he says the internal environment was never truly calm.
“We had the best team,” Perez said. “Unfortunately, everything was destroyed.
“We had the team to have dominated the next ten years in F1, I believe, and unfortunately, everything came to an end. But I was in the best team.
A complicated team, right? Because being Max’s team-mate… just being Max’s team-mate is already very difficult, but being Max’s team-mate at Red Bull is the worst job there is in Formula 1, by far.
“Everyone forgot, didn’t they? When I arrived at Red Bull, I started getting results and everything, and everyone forgot how difficult it was to be in that seat. And I was very aware of what I was getting into. I arrived at Red Bull and they put you up against one of the greatest drivers in history.”
That reality, Perez insists, was spelled out from the very beginning.
A Project Built For Max
Perez says his first conversation with then-team principal Christian Horner made Red Bull’s hierarchy crystal clear.
“I knew what I was getting into,” he added. “This project is built for Max. When I first sat down with Christian, he told me: ‘Look, we’re going to race with two cars because we have to race with two cars. But this project has been created for Max. Max is our talent.’
“It’s like if Carlos Slim builds a team and I’m his driver, right? And you hire a Dutch guy. So it’s the same thing.
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“So that’s what I was stepping into, and I was very aware of it. I told him: ‘It doesn’t matter. In this team I’m going to develop the car, I’m going to support the car, I’m going to support the team.’”
For a time, Perez believed he could thrive within that framework. In 2022, circumstances briefly aligned in his favour.
When Being Quicker Became a ‘Problem’
“In 2022, when the car by mistake came out very heavy, we had a very heavy car with the weight distribution too far forward, right? So it was much, much more stable, it was always what I was looking for,” Perez recounted.
“So at that moment, I remember that in the simulator I was faster than Max, and I was already arriving at the race weekends thinking about winning the race, and everything came automatically.
“As a driver, when you don’t have to think about how to drive, about what the car is going to do, everything comes automatically. And then we had a car that maybe wasn’t so much in Max’s style, and in 2022 I started fighting for the championship with him… until the upgrades arrived.”
It’s here Perez made his most eyebrow-raising claim – that even outperforming Verstappen created friction.
To be clear, moments where Perez genuinely outpaced the four-time world champion were few and fleeting. Verstappen’s dominance across their time together was overwhelming, relentless and statistical.
Yet in those rare windows when Perez did edge ahead, Red Bull, he claims, grew uncomfortable – as if the hierarchy itself had been disturbed.
Pressure, Upgrades and a Spiral
Perez says the pattern repeated itself once development shifted decisively back toward Verstappen’s preferences.
“When the upgrades arrive, there is a very clear direction in which the team has to go, and that’s when I start to have problems.
“Because I no longer know what the car is going to do in the corner, I’m already thinking about not crashing, and then the crashes start, the accidents start. You don’t have 100% control.
“And then the same thing happens in 2023. The team builds a much more stable car for both drivers, but as soon as the upgrades arrive in 2023 and I start fighting for the championship with Max - he wins one race, I win another, he wins one, I win another, meaning that over four races he won two and I won two — so we were very evenly matched.
“And when we get to Barcelona, from fighting at the front, I go to being a second per lap slower. I no longer had control of the car. So then all this pressure starts.
“All this pressure, which was very hard because, well, the one at fault is the driver, right? Because you’re not focused, because you’re doing too many commercials, or because you’re involved in other things.”
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Perez’s form collapsed in 2024, finishing eighth in the standings before being replaced for 2025. What followed was a revolving door of successors – Liam Lawson, then Yuki Tsunoda, and now Isack Hadjar for 2026 – a churn that only sharpens Perez’s final verdict.
‘Everything as a problem’
“The team would complain about everything,” Perez concluded. “Practically everything.
“At Red Bull, everything was a problem. If I was very fast, it was a problem because it created a very tense atmosphere at Red Bull. If I was faster than Max, it was a problem. And if I was slower than Max, it was a problem. So everything was a problem.”
In Perez’s telling, Red Bull wasn’t just a team built around Verstappen – it was one that struggled to function whenever reality briefly strayed from that script.
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