Karun Chandhok labels F1 star 'broken' amid concerns for his future
Karun Chandhok thinks Red Bull have "broken" Sergio Perez with the weight of expectation placed upon him.
The Mexican is in his third season as team-mate to Max Verstappen. The Dutchman looks set to complete a hat-trick of championship successes in that time, which has been an extraordinarily successful period for the team.
But despite a handful of wins and more than a dozen podiums in Red Bull colours, Perez's future is constantly under scrutiny. It has been particularly intense in recent weeks amid a poor spell of form, particularly in qualifying.
He was back where Red Bull want him to be in Belgium last weekend, qualifying well and playing his part in a one-two finish for the team. But he was still 22 seconds behind Verstappen at the end of the race, having started four places ahead on the grid.
Perez is without a win since Baku in April. And his poorest form came in the aftermath of the Miami Grand Prix, which he started on pole but was still beaten to the finish line by Verstappen despite barely putting a foot wrong.
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That, believes former Formula 1 racer Chandhok, was the moment that Perez's confidence when through the floor. "The only other thing they appear to have broken is their second driver in some ways, he said on the Sky Sports F1 podcast.
"At the start of the year, I go back to the drive he put in, in Jeddah, but more importantly in Baku. [Sky Sports commentator, David Croft] and I were in the commentary box there saying he would have overtaken Max, let alone the strategy, he would have overtaken Max on track and won that race.
"It was a proper convincing performance, admittedly at one of his strongest circuits on the calendar. But ever since he got overtaken on whatever it was, lap 41 in Miami – it's just gone away from him. And you know, I look at what happened even at the weekend at Spa. Max got ahead of him and he put 22 seconds on him in 27 laps.
"That's a big chunk of performance to put around a track where they're spending a lot of time at full throttle driving in a straight line, essentially. And to me, that is the cause of concern – the only cause of concern – at the moment in the Red Bull camp is, you know, Max, is this the fourth team-mate that he's potentially broken?
"Who can they have alongside him? Or do they just say, 'You know what? We don't really need anyone to be challenging him, we're happy for somebody to be half a second off the pace because our car is good enough for Max to be able to deliver at that level.'"
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