Speaking after the final Grand Prix of the 2024 F1 season in Abu Dhabi, Max Verstappen defended his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez.
Sergio Perez is the driver who has been under the highest scrutiny throughout the 2024 season as he drove for a team that won the Drivers' Championship, and yet he was far behind all other drivers from the top 4 F1 teams.
The Mexican driver has not been able to finish in the top 5 in the last 18 Grand Prix weekends, and the second half of the season has been particularly tough for him.
Since the summer break (in the last 10 races), the 34-year-old scored 21 points, which is much less than any other driver in the top 7 or even Pierre Gasly on Alpine, who finished the 2024 season tenth in the Drivers' Championship.
In total, Perez collected almost three times fewer points than his teammate - 152 vs. 437 and lost the head-to-head battle with Verstappen 23-1 in both qualifying and Grand Prix results.
Although he signed a contract extension with Red Bull following the Miami Grand Prix, statements from the Austrian team's leaders over the last few weekends of the season suggested they weren't so keen to continue with the Mexican driver.
The 34-year-old has been under a lot of fire on social media as well. Every weekend, Perez had to answer questions about his future, which he kept dismissing, saying that he had a contract and that he would be racing for Red Bull in 2025.
2024 has been a psychologically very challenging year for Sergio Perez. When Max Verstappen was asked whether he felt sympathy for him, he told the media at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi:
"I do. I work with him every weekend, week in, week out, and I find people have been very harsh on him."
"Of course, there are some weekends [that] maybe could have been better, actually, but sometimes people have been very harsh on him, because he's not an idiot."
"He's always been regarded as a great driver, and it's been tough, but it's been tough for everyone in the team, because sometimes it was just very difficult to drive [the RB20]."
At the time of publishing this article, Perez's future in Red Bull still seems uncertain. Red Bull Racing was supposed to hold a meeting with shareholders where the 34-year-old's future would be decided shortly after the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
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