After suffering a driveshaft failure during the Q2 in Jeddah, Max Verstappen crashed out of qualifying. That resultantly put him in P15 on the starting grid for the race day. Making the most of the situation, the Dutchman marched ahead and finished P2, behind only his teammate Sergio Perez. However, slipping down to 2nd in the championship was unacceptable to the reigning champion, and he tricked his teammate to take the extra point for the fastest lap to stay on top. Speaking after the race, Perez looked surprised that his partner pulled that off despite the team urging them both to concentrate on bringing the car home. That, apparently, according to some, is a sign of naivety.

The relationship between Checo and Max started off well when the Mexican driver arrived at Red Bull. Checo even played the ultimate team game with his heroics at the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP that helped Verstappen win his maiden championship. Despite that, when it came to returning the favor in Brazil last year, defying the team orders, Max backed out.

Speaking on what happened in Saudi Arabia, Nate Saunders, on Unlapped ESPN F1 podcast, said, “I’m surprised that Checo is surprised when Max isn’t listening to the team. I feel like that’s kind of the vibe he gave at the end of the race. And I feel like someone needs to shake him and be like, ‘do you not remember what happened in Brazil last year?’ It’s a really interesting position we’re in this season where clearly Perez is going to be Max’s only championship challenger this year.”

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Verstappen may have caught his teammate by surprise at the end of the race, but Checo certainly has had an overhaul in attitude. The Minister of Defence recently put out a tweet reiterating his commitment to winning the championship this year.

What Sergio Perez needs to do to get under Max Verstappen’s skin

Lewis Hamilton vs Nico Rosberg remains one of the fiercest teammate rivalries in the modern F1 era. While Hamilton came out on top more often than Nico, the German driver finally got his time to shine in 2016. Saunders, in the podcast, urged Checo to adopt the approach Rosberg took to pip Lewis to the 2016 championship.

He said, “what Perez needs to be doing is he needs to be looking [at] what Rosberg did in ‘14 and ‘16 to get under Hamilton’s skin. And a lot of that was about just playing the game in the same way Hamilton played it. I think it’s a bit of a different situation in the fact that Perez is probably much easier for Red Bull to drop if things get really bad.”

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Do you think this is the start of the development of a new rivalry in F1? Can Perez really take the fight to Verstappen? Or was the result in Jeddah just a lucky result for him?