Red Bull driver Sergio Perez admits he drove with “no confidence” in the summer races.
Sergio Perez believes his season has taken a turn for the worse after the Miami Grand Prix, where he reached his fourth podium in the first five races.
Perez leaves Miami straight into a championship battle with Max Verstappen, after two wins and two podiums in the first five races.
He entered the Monaco Grand Prix as Verstappen’s only title rival; However, becoming a championship candidate seems to be more beneficial for Perez.
At the Monaco GP, things started to go wrong very quickly for the 33-year-old driver when he crashed during qualifying in Q1. His exit in Q1 at Monaco was the first of four consecutive races in which he failed to progress to Q3, causing him to lose significant ground against the reigning world champion.
As a result, it became more difficult for the Red Bull driver, who dropped out of the championship fight, to win the podium.
Some wondered if he would find his form before the summer break, when he scored back-to-back podiums in Hungary and Belgium.
However, he missed out on victory in the Netherlands when he recently retired twice at Suzuka.
It seemed to be a case of one step forward and two steps back, in which he openly admitted that his downward spiral began after Miami, which he attributed to him feeling “a another car”. Perez admitted that a string of shocking results in qualifying had “destroyed” his self-esteem, to the point where he “drove without confidence” throughout the summer.
“At the beginning of the year I had a good impression of the car, but the car is evolving,” Perez told De Limburger.
“After Miami, things got worse for me. I felt like I was driving another car, far away from my needs.
“I failed to get past Q3 many times, sometimes I even struggled to get through the early stages of qualifying. “All of this has destroyed my self-esteem. In the summer, I lack confidence in driving, everything is complicated,” he admitted.
Perez must regain form in the final six rounds of 2023, to avoid losing second place in the drivers’ championship to seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.
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