The talk of the current F1 season has largely focused on Max Verstappen and how dominant he has been so far; it doesn’t look as if anyone can even challenge at the front, nor that Max will need to sweat for dropping a race outside of mechanical issues or freak bad luck during a race.
Last week’s race at Hungary did nothing to dispel this either, despite qualifying second behind former rival Lewis Hamilton, the race was all but decided for Max before the end of the first corner. With one Red Bull up at the front of the grid, there are a lot of questions for the second seat, however, as Perez has strung together a series of poor qualifying performances, being quite far away from the mark set by his teammate in the same machinery.
Checo now has three exits in Q1, three in Q2, and just four appearances in Q3 with some being towards the back end of that Q3 grid being quite far behind Max, and whilst this seems to matter little for the time being with Max stringing the performances together that he needs and the RB19 being so strong that Checo can carve his way through the field despite a number of bad performances, the increased performance of the rest of the grid could serve as a warning.
McLaren has brought some impressive upgrades and are battling right at the front, with Mercedes now serving as rival three albeit with some questionable performance of their own, should the day come where Max is in a tricky spot with now veteran Lando Norris and his rookie teammate Oscar Piastri in a position to play the strategy game against Red Bull and challenge for a win, Perez being nowhere to be seen after a poor qualifying could leave the team in a somewhat tricky position.
Behind door number two is the potential of Daniel Ricciardo, his debut return at Alpha Tauri wasn’t one to turn heads with a P13 finish, but out-qualifying his teammate Yuki Tsunoda who has three-years of experience in the car and finishing above him at the final flag too, continuing this performance against a more experienced teammate in the car would be exactly what Red Bull are looking for when this decision was made.
It’s much easier to believe that Ricciardo wouldn’t mind playing second fiddle to Max this time around, too, as their first partnership led to some close fights and some small mishaps too as both drivers were vying to be the championship winning driver for the team, but both have matured and grown since.
With all of the speculation there are certainly some exciting opportunities emerging from this potential juggle, silly season is just around the corner as F1 prepares to head into its summer break where all of the rumors and wild theories start to emerge and there will be some fun potential bids and bets with special codes available at www.promotion.com.ng Red Bull have shown they’re not afraid to make a mid-season change, and whilst it’s unlikely to happen during the 2023 season, it could be a fun bit of icing on the cake.
For now, it seems the championship has been all sealed up just a few races into the year, but there’s still some potential for some huge change and some interesting questions posed by pundits too, one thing for certain however is that Sergio Perez will need to spend the rest of the season stringing together impressive performances, or he could find himself in a tough spot come no the end of the year.