Red Bull switch Perez’s side is underrated

Sergio Perez underperformed in his first year at Red Bull. According to his own statements, he “hoped for more” from a Formula 1 season in which teammate Max Verstappen became world champion.

There were many aggravating factors surrounding Perez’s Red Bull move and many of them are easy to understand: 1.5 days of pre-season testing, a very different car philosophy, the fact that Red Bull is Verstappen’s team and the unenviable one standard that he represents.

What about the engine change from Mercedes to Honda? It’s something that Perez says is on the list of things “even as a driver, you underestimate until you live them.”

“Driving a different engine is a completely different task,” he says.

“A completely different philosophy of driving the car with the higher rake compared to the lower rate is a completely different task.

“The approach to things is just extremely different and you have to learn new techniques. Basically, what I used to do didn’t really work.

“It would be the same, for example, if Max went to Mercedes. They are very different. They produce very similar lap times, but the way they calculate lap times is extremely different.”

The change of team and car will of course be an integral part of this challenge. While Perez is focused on pointing out that a high-raked car like the Red Bull is something “I haven’t driven my entire career,” any tools for maximizing this car’s performance are alien to a switch like this is made.

And Perez rightly concedes that the motor element is underrated.

Differential mapping has become such a dark art in Formula 1 and understanding the dynamic implications of all these settings is vital. They vary from team to team, even if you’re within the same engine group.

Changing the drive unit will no doubt add to the complication as it interacts with power delivery, particularly mid-corner and corner exit. This means that the properties of the power section have an influence on it.

Braking forms are also team-specific, and an engine’s braking and harvesting characteristics interact with it.

And then there are the simplest things – at least on the surface – like changing gears and having muscle memory for when to upshift. Power curves and how the energy recovery system kicks in are likely to be quite different.

Just as muscle memory is critical to braking and turn-in techniques, timing an upshift to maximize the power curve or the impact on tire life of not short shifting properly will make a measurable difference in lap power and lap time Stay.

Especially when you consider that Perez had only driven a type of V6 turbo hybrid drive in F1, i.e. had switched to Mercedes knowledge that was anchored in his brain at seven years – and then switched to a day and a half in had brought down the season to try and replace them.

For example, while Perez was able to learn how to restart his car unaided after his engine died on the formation lap in Bahrain, the finer details that are actual performance differentiators (even on a tiny level) aren’t as easy to learn to absorb .

That contributed to the significant uptick in output and earnings that Perez enjoyed in the second half of the year.

“Now I’ve finally understood how to drive a car, how to get the most out of it,” he says.

“And because of that, the results were much better.”

Three of Perez’s five podiums have come in the last seven Grands Prix. He narrowly missed another race after a bizarrely poor qualifying result in Qatar, was an unfortunate victim of Saudi Arabia’s restart madness and retired a comfortable third in Abu Dhabi – where he played a starring role, Lewis Hamilton at Verstappens striving to disrupt the title.

It’s not hard to say that Perez could have finished in the top four at each of the last eight races of 2021, and at least half of those should have been podiums. That’s a significant improvement on the five top four finishes he achieved in the first 14 Grands Prix.

The point is that while Perez was never truly stunning even at his best in 2021 and his main limitation against Verstappen will be his underlying skill rather than the nuances of a Honda powerplant, there was clear evidence Perez works better Standard once he was comfortable with his machinery.

“It was a slow adjustment,” he admits, “but to a very different car, a very different engine.

“With a new team there was a lot of things to learn without actually testing. Before the first race I drove for a day and a half. I hadn’t done anything before the first race.

“But all in all I think it was a promising season. Of course I would have hoped for more, but it is what it is. And I keep pushing.

“We’ve had some positive days, we’ve had some negative ones, but we’re only getting stronger. We already have a baseline to work from. So that makes a big difference.

“I already know the people, I already know who to ask for what and how to bring out the best in everyone around me.

“So that’s a very different picture.”