Perez says Red Bull was built entirely for Verstappen

Sergio Pérez says Christian Horner told him before he signed for Red Bull that the team was built around Max Verstappen, a reality Pérez believes made that seat "the hardest job in F1."

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Pérez said Red Bull made its hierarchy clear from the start. He recalled Horner telling him: "We race with two cars because it’s a duty; otherwise one car would be enough. Everything is built around Max. We are fighting to win the championship." Pérez said that first conversation defined the role he was accepting and that he never felt misled about where he stood inside the team.

Pérez said the difficulty was not simply facing Verstappen on pace, but doing so inside a structure tailored to the Dutchman. "To face Max at Red Bull is the toughest challenge," he said. "Even to face Max at any other team would be very tough. But to face him at Red Bull, with his team, his people, his surroundings, it’s tough." He said Verstappen had "his team, his engineers, and his environment," while "senior engineers and experienced personnel" and "all the opportunities" went to Verstappen.

Rather than fight that setup, Pérez said he chose to work within it. He said he could either complain or "do the maximum work in the given environment," adding: "I think I did more than expected in every aspect." Over four seasons from 2021 to 2024, Pérez won five races at Azerbaijan in 2021, Monaco and Singapore in 2022, and Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan in 2023. He also scored 29 podiums as Verstappen won four straight world titles and Red Bull collected constructors’ championships.

Pérez said there were points when he felt he could compete on equal terms, but that changed as Red Bull developed the car. "There were years when I thought we could fight, but every time upgrades came in, the gap kept widening," he said. He added that the car became so difficult to drive that he could no longer drive it naturally at the limit and instead focused on keeping the rear from stepping out.

He argued that the same environment has hurt other Red Bull team-mates too. Pérez said Liam Lawson "ended after two races" and said Yuki Tsunoda also struggled, while Pierre Gasly and Alexander Albon were "very fast and talented drivers" but "the system breaks them."

That matters to Pérez’s view of his own Red Bull spell. After a winless 2024 season in which he scored four podiums before leaving the team at the end of the year, he said Red Bull better understood his contribution only once he was gone. In his account, the challenge was never just sharing a garage with Verstappen, but doing it in a team whose entire project was designed to serve one driver first.