Max Verstappen defended his former Red Bull Racing teammate, Sergio Perez, who was replaced after the end of the 2024 season.
On the 18th of December 2024, Red Bull Racing announced that Sergio Perez would not be driving for their F1 team in 2025.
The Mexican driver will be taking a one-year break during which he plans to evaluate his options, but it seems he won't be racing for Red Bull's F1 teams again.
The 2024 season was probably the most difficult in career for Perez, who finished eighth in the drivers' championship while his teammate Max Verstappen won.
The 34-year-old driver lost the race head-to-head battle with Verstappen 29-1 (including sprints) as he finished ahead of the Dutchman only in one race in 2024, the Australian Grand Prix - where Verstappen suffered a technical retirement.
There has been a huge pressure on Red Bull to replace the Mexican driver for a long time, and while it was inevitable in the end, Max Verstappen defended his former teammate, telling Sports Illustrated that it wasn't all his fault:
"On the one hand, it was of course difficult for Checo and I think it wasn't always his fault."
"We also had a very difficult car at that time. You can also play it on that. I don't want to criticize him at all. And I can also clearly say that it wasn't all his fault, about how things went wrong."
"The biggest problem we had this season was that the car didn't work. Of course, I know Checo's driving style."
"The car we had at one point was very difficult to drive. That was also the case for me and that just doesn't help."
"We should have started working on that sooner, because that would have helped him a lot too."
"At the start of the season he was just in second or third place, so that was fine. At a certain point, it was very difficult."
"Then confidence takes a hit and some people are more sensitive to that than others. I don't think we did that as a team either."
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