The checkered flag may have dropped on Sergio Perez’s Red Bull career, but the verbal engine room is still red-lining.
In a sport where egos are as finely tuned as the aerodynamics, the Mexican veteran’s recent reflections on his time alongside Max Verstappen have triggered a blunt, spicy, and characteristically sharp rebuttal from former F1 reporter Peter Windsor.
Perez, who will return to the grid this season with Cadillac, recently reopened old wounds by suggesting Red Bull effectively operated as a one-car team during his stint with Verstappen.
“At Red Bull everything was a problem. If I was very fast, it was a problem. If I was slower than Max, it was a problem. So everything was a problem,” Perez claimed, implying the team had little interest in anyone not named Verstappen.
The Perfect Victim
Windsor, speaking on the Cameron CC podcast, found the "victim" narrative impossible to swallow.
“I think he’s being a perfect victim, I don’t think there’s a grain of truth in it,” the Briton said, dismissing the idea that the team sabotaged or ignored their second driver.
Windsor, who now watches the action from the sidelines, argued that Perez’s struggles had far less to do with team politics and far more to do with raw performance – or the lack of it.
According to the veteran F1 reporter, Perez simply wasn’t the calibre of driver required to thrive at a dominant outfit like Red Bull – and history, he says, proves it.
“I think if you had Charles Leclerc in the other Red Bull in the last five or six years, I think he would have been pretty successful,” Windsor asserted.
“He might even have won a championship against Max. That’s not to say he’s as good as Max right now, but if you had a class driver in the other car, of course he’d be very near Max.
“The reality is they’ve never had a class driver alongside Max, apart from the brief period when Daniel Ricciardo was there. Red Bull are quite capable of producing two very competitive cars, as we saw in the Mark Webber-Sebastian Vettel days.”
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For Windsor, the suggestion that Red Bull deliberately sidelined Perez doesn’t hold water – and he went further, accusing the Mexican of rewriting history to soothe bruised pride.
“So it’s all nonsense and it’s all Perez trying to justify not being as quick as Max and basically saying ‘if they had built the car around me I would have won four world championships and Max would have been nowhere.
“Is that what he’s trying to say? I don’t know. But I think he’s wrong there as well.”
A Reality Check on Gratitude
Perhaps the spiciest part of Windsor’s take was his suggestion that Perez should stop complaining and start counting his blessings. In the Briton’s eyes, the Mexican driver actually overachieved given his raw talent level.
“Well above his talent level probably he won grands prix, he should be saying ‘I just can’t believe how lucky I was to be driving for Red Bull when I did, I was so happy to be there, what a great team, I was there for the golden days with Jonathan Wheatley and Christian [Horner] and Adrian [Newey]’,” Windsor remarked.
“Why is he not saying that? Saying thank you very much Red Bull for those grand prix wins.”
Windsor concluded by suggesting that Perez has become a prisoner of his own hype, fueled by a fiercely loyal home media.
“It’s the same old story. When he won a few races early on and all the Mexican press got excited about how he could win the championship and beat Max, and he believed it all!” he continued.
“Of course, the press are going to say that, because that’s what they do. But for Perez to believe it all, and he’s believing it all now I guess. It’s ridiculous.”
While Windsor’s words are sure to ruffle feathers in Guadalajara, they serve as a scathing reminder that in the paddock – or in the podcast studio – the debate over the "second seat" at Red Bull never truly reaches the finish line.
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