Lando Norris takes aim at Sergio Perez as Red Bull could pay the ultimate price
Sergio Perez is under fire following a miserable weekend at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Lando Norris has claimed that the Constructors’ Championship battle is currently between Ferrari and McLaren, despite Red Bull leading the way by 49 points. The reigning champions are being held up by the performances of Max Verstappen with Sergio Perez failing to finish back-to-back races following worrying qualifying performances.
Perez was eliminated in Q1 in both Monte Carlo and Montreal with these less-than-ideal qualifying showings putting him in and amongst the chaos on race day. As a result, he crashed out on the opening lap at the Monaco Grand Prix, and repeated his fate in Canada on Sunday, collapsing his rear wing after contact with the wall on lap 53.
While Verstappen now boasts a 56-point lead at the top of the standings after nine races, Checo is languishing down in P5, 87 points further back from his colleague. This leaves him in a battle with Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri on either side and means that Red Bull are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.
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Giving his assessment of the battle at the top, Norris said: “To be honest, at the minute, I think it’s between Ferrari and us. Yeah, so we’ll keep pushing. I think that’s one of our biggest strengths at the minute.
“We have two drivers, as McLaren, who are up there not making mistakes and getting pretty much everything out of the car every single weekend. Yeah, it’s rare. There’s not many other teams on the grid that have such a thing. So for us, it’s more of what we can do against Ferrari.
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“Again, we’ve been a more consistent team coming into this weekend. They’ve (Ferrari) had some mistakes and just struggled a little bit more for whatever reason. But at the end of the day, I think two is going to be better than one, you know, in Max’s case.”
While Perez’s form is naturally a concern to Red Bull, Verstappen isn’t hitting the panic button just yet. "I think the damage was done yesterday for Checo, he said. “Starting in the back, it's very hard in these conditions. Then I saw him retire with the damage. So I knew that I had to score big to not let the other teams catch up.
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"I do think at the end of the day, as long as you keep winning, you score 25 points, even if the others finish P2, P3, you don't really lose out too much. And then, you know, you kind of can afford sometimes these one-offs.
"But of course, naturally, we always want the two cars to be up there. And I also have no doubt that that will change very soon again. We just need to work on our car, to make it a bit easier to drive also, to feel a bit more comfortable. And then I'm sure that we have both cars back up there like we had in the beginning of the season."
