In the most unexpected trends of the 2022 season, banter among the podium finishers after the race has become a thing. The first two podiums of the current campaign featured two Red Bull drivers. The third race of the season in Australia was an exception, with Lewis Hamilton breaking the norm. This scenario gave Fernando Alonso a perfect opportunity to get the last laugh at Sergio Perez‘s expense.

Alonso, in the season opener, surprised the entire F1 community by beating Mercedes and Ferrari to clinch Aston Martin’s first podium. However, most of the grid foresaw this scenario thanks to AMR23’s capabilities, coupled with the fact that Aston Martin poached a lot of Red Bull engineers. This is exactly why Perez joked about three Red Bull cars on the podium in the season opener in Bahrain.

However, the Australian GP was the first race where drivers from three different teams made it to the podium. This gave Alonso a perfect opportunity to exact revenge, which he did during the press conference, as quoted by F1 Maximaal.

“No longer three Red Bulls on the podium, because Checo (Pérez, ed.) Is not there,” Alonso jokes. The Spaniard also quickly appreciated the Mercedes man as well, as he did not stir up any drama.

“But no, I think Mercedes was also very strong in Jeddah. If I just look at Sunday’s race, I was within a tenth of George (Russell, ed.) and I was fighting to get that extra five seconds at the end, so it was very close.” said the two-time world champion. (Translated by Google)

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Banter has become a regular fixture during post-race press conferences. At least in the first three races, and even Verstappen was subjected to it recently. In fact, even the team principals are taking part in it.

Horner also took a page out of Perez’s book to mock Fernando Alonso and Co.

The first team principal that comes to mind for becoming a part of such inter-team banter is Christian Horner. The British boss proved us right when he took a page out of Perez’s book calling the AMR23 a Red Bull car. Horner made the correlation during his discussion about Dan Fallows, the former Red Bull engineer.

“Everything has to evolve. Nothing stands still. I think it is flattering to see the resemblance of that car to ours, so it was great to see the three of them on the podium,” said Horner, as quoted by Motorsport. 

The running joke is not going to die down soon. Or at least the Red Bull men won’t let it.

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All joking aside, Red Bull is also aware of how a similar-looking car can hurt them during the race. Couple that with former engineers being the mastermind behind the car, and Red Bull has a real problem. It’ll be interesting to see if Aston Martin catches Red Bull in the future.