By Sergio Silva
Dec 23, 2023, 18:14 PM EST
Sergio “Checo” Pérez He is preparing for a new Formula 1 season in which he will repeat as Max Verstappen’s teammate at Red Bull after rumors about his possible departure from the team. It will be a campaign in which The Mexican driver will try to close the gap with the Dutchman which comes from dominating practically all of 2023.
The difference between the first place Verstappen achieved without any type of opposition and the runner-up finish that “Checo” Pérez received was abysmal. To the point that the three-time F1 champion ended up adding more than twice as many points as the man from Guadalajara, who received harsh criticism for not having been able to take full advantage of the qualities of the RB19.
Given this need to improve, Sergio “Checo” Pérez has received several recommendations to increase his performance for the 2024 F1 season, one of them from the director of the Austrian team, Christian Horner, but the most recent were from the Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas, who went through a similar situation a few years ago at Mercedes.
“You can’t spend a weekend telling yourself you can’t beat your teammate, because if you do you’ve already lost.”Bottas launched during an interview published this Saturday by the Motorsport Magazin portal in which he recalled what his time with the German team was like between the 2017 and 2021 seasons.
At that time, the 34-year-old Finnish driver was a teammate of the British Lewis Hamilton, who won four of his seven Formula 1 championship titles, which relegated Valtteri Bottas to the background within the Mercedes team, from where he He left for Alpha Romeo Racing, his current team.
“You have to approach each race as if you could beat anyone”Bottas assured and that was something that “Checo” Pérez tried in the last campaign in which he achieved just two victories in the highest category of motorsports compared to the 19 that the Dutchman achieved. Between the two of them they won 22 of 23 events on the calendar.
“This is a sport in which you have to have a lot of confidence in your abilities. If you do not have confidence in yourself, you will enter a negative spiral of results which is very complicated to face”acknowledged the Finn who finished in 15th place in the drivers’ classification in the season that ended less than a month ago.
Valtteri Bottas ended by specifically analyzing the case of the Mexican from Red Bull. “I think that if you look at what is happening to Sergio Pérez now, you can see that he does not have enough confidence in himself and that shows in the results he obtains”.
Keep reading:
– Red Bull reveals the secret of the RB19 with which Max Verstappen and “Checo” Pérez shone during the spectacular 2023 Formula 1 season
– Sergio “Checo” Pérez and Max Verstappen spoke about their friendship amid rumors about a possible rivalry: “It has become much more romantic”
– Max Verstappen’s father throws a dart at Sergio “Checo” Pérez: “I would like to see more competition within the Red Bull team”