Bottas Indicates Perez Struggled With Trust During Challenging 2023 Season

Friday, 22 December 2023 at 13:00

Valtteri Bottas commented on Sergio Perez's situation inside Red Bull Racing during the 2023 season.

Current Alfa Romeo/ Sauber driver Valtteri Bottas used to race for Mercedes two years ago. He spent five years with the team, from 2017 until the end of 2021.

The Finn raced alongside the seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton, and throughout all his years with Silver Arrows, he couldn't beat the British driver in the battle for the Championship.

Despite being beaten by Hamilton five out of five times, the 34-year-old shared he still believes he could beat anyone on the grid today if he was sat in the same car. He told Motorsport Magazin:

"I still go to races with good confidence and feel like I can beat anyone on a good day."

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F1 is a super competitive sport, and all the drivers have to be truly convinced they are the best if they want to win the Championship title one day. Bottas continued:

"You have to have this attitude. You can't go into a race weekend and tell yourself you can't beat him. You would have already lost."

Formula One drivers can only be really compared to their own team members because they are the only ones who race in equal machinery.

However, direct comparison to the teammate can often be discouraging for the drivers, and as Bottas described, if they don't have confidence, they end up in a difficult downward spiral.

"In this sense, it is a sport in which you always have to have good self-confidence and convince yourself. If you don't have that trust, you'll end up in a difficult downward spiral."

Sergio Perez has been completely outperformed by his teammate Max Verstappen in Red Bull in 2023. The Mexican driver finished the season 290 points behind his own teammate.

Former Red Bull Racing driver Christian Klien recently suggested Perez realized halfway through the season he could not beat the Dutchman, and that mentally broke him. Bottas explained he thinks the Mexican driver lacks confidence and trust at the moment.

"You can see that on the stopwatch and the consistency. I would say, looking at what Checo is going through, he's definitely lacking some trust. And you can see that in the results."