Red Bull chief shares Sergio Perez 'failed' admission as 2024 plan becomes clear
Despite how dominant Red Bull were in 2023, technical director Pierre Wache thinks Sergio Perez's struggles meant the team still "failed".
The Mexican finished second in the championship behind only team-mate Max Verstappen. It meant Red Bull, for the first time, completed a Formula 1 season with both its drivers ahead of everyone else in the championship.
But it was not a walk in the park for Perez. For a while, it looked like he was at risk of losing that second spot as he struggled for form. Even though he eventually managed to get the job done, his inconsistent results left him 290 points adrift by the end of the year.
Verstappen consistently extracted every drop of performance from the incredibly fast RB19 while Perez struggled to do so. And that is why Red Bull technical chief Wache is not wholly satisfied despite the team's extraordinary campaign.
"A fast car is a car that allows the driver to perform to the maximum," he told the Dutch Formule1 magazine. "We failed in that respect because only one driver, Max, in this case, could handle it well.
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"That is Max's talent, that he managed to use the car well throughout the season and under different conditions. On the other hand, we in turn may not have properly understood Checo what he needs to get the potential out of the RB19."
Wache's frustration hints that it will be an area of focus for him and his design colleagues as they continue to work on their 2024 car. If there performance gap between Red Bull and their rivals is closer this team, they may need both of their drivers to be firing in order to mount a successful title defence.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has himself admitted that Verstappen was the only driver on the grid this year who drove to his full ability on a consistent basis. "It's difficult to comprehend that good drivers in various teams have these oscillations of performance," said the Austrian.
"You've seen it [in Abu Dhabi] with [Carlos] Sainz and [Charles] Leclerc, you've seen it with George [Russell] and Lewis [Hamilton], Oscar [Piastri] and Lando [Norris]. And the obvious one is Perez and Verstappen. Perez is not a second slower than Max. So, what is that? We have seen it swinging in both directions.
"So, fundamentally, I think it's all around the tyre grip. If you are able to have the car in a sweet spot, a stable platform that you start the work with the beginning of the weekend, then you can extract performance. I think if you're not, there's just no performance. You're falling off the cliff, literally. So I have no explanation for that. I think the only one this year who has understood how to drive these tyres is Max."
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