Dutch Lion Max Verstappen’s Scary Supremacy at Red Bull Raises Concerns as Christian Horner’s Leadership Comes Under Scrutiny

Sergio Perez spent his first year with Red Bull prioritizing the results to favor Max Verstappen. That was because the Dutchman was directly competing with Lewis Hamilton, who was coming on the back of 4 consecutive championship wins. The next year, the Mexican failed to pose any threat to his teammate’s supremacy like the rest of the grid. Things were sailing smoothly between the two until the Brazilian GP, where Verstappen defied team orders and did not let Perez pass. The gulf between the duo grew even more when Max once again defied team orders in the last race just to gain one extra point over his teammate. These incidents have raised questions about Christian Horner’s leadership capabilities and his ability to tame the Dutch Lion.

As the race progressed towards the final few laps, both Perez (in P1) and Verstappen (in P2) enquired about the fastest lap. However, their respective race engineers told them not to worry about it as the team’s priority was to avoid any mistakes and just bring the cars home and deliver the 1-2 result. However, Max caught Checo by surprise when he went for the extra point by setting the fastest lap just before the end of the race.

Reacting to the situation in his latest interview with Automoto, F1 analyst Tom Coronel said, “As a driver, of course I understand that in the pursuit of victory. The team wants him to be as fast as possible. If he made a mistake, they could have said ‘We have a deal, what are you doing,’ but he did a great job so the team won’t tell him anything, neither [Helmut] Marko nor Horner can tell him ‘You didn’t listen to us’, ever. They’ll go up to him and say, ‘Nice work!'” [Translated using Google]

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Given how Max is performing lately, it is possible that Marko and Horner do not want to interfere with his processes. However, Perez has shown a new streak of ferocity as well, and might not go down without a fight this time around.

Sergio Perez ready to take the fight to Max Verstappen

Checo’s father, Antonio, in a recent interview talked about his son’s rejuvenated thirst for the championship win. He also talked about Sergio’s commitment to not go back to Mexico without the title trophy. Turns out, those words weren’t unfounded. Checo himself recently put out a Tweet, a part of which he deleted later.

According to abc.net.au, Perez wrote, “It was tougher than I thought, but in the end I’m happy to get my fifth victory in F1. Very happy with the result of the team. We are going to keep pushing very hard, I want to be champion.”

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He later deleted the “I want to be champion” part and retweeted it. Was that perhaps a result of some instructions from Red Bull management that seemingly haven’t done much to mind their other driver?