Both Red Bull Racing F1 drivers have expressed concerns about the reliability of the car. After two races in 2023, it is almost certain that this year’s world championship battle will be between just two drivers, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
Perez took pole position in Jeddah, but only because Verstappen’s driveshaft failed to qualify. So Saudi Arabia was in favor of Perez, but Perez fears that similar troubles will affect his Red Bull sooner or later. “It’s going to hit us at some point,” Sergio Perez said. “Even in Bahrain, if we had to push all the way to the end, I don’t know what would have happened. So there are a lot of reliability concerns at the moment. “We have a lot of mechanical issues.” Arabia But on the Red Bull wall, they were making a ferocious effort to control the speed of the drivers at the front of the race. “The biggest worry was when Max said he heard a loud noise and he immediately started thinking about the problem with the driveshaft the day before,” said team principal Christian Horner. Perez said he also felt “strange vibrations” during the race in Saudi Arabia. “What happened to Max was in the back of my mind and I’m sure everyone in the team thinks the same,” said Perez. But that concern didn’t stop Red Bull’s perfect record of two consecutive one-two finishes. World champion Verstappen said: “The general feeling of the team is that everyone is happy.” “But personally I’m not happy,” he said. We have to. “It’s still Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur believes reliability can ultimately decide who wins the title between Verstappen and Perez. “Imagine Perez wins two more races and Verstappen retires. The gearbox fails and he gets a penalty in the next race. “After Monaco, Perez is 100 points ahead of Verstappen. Circumstances can arise, let’s not forget the season with Rosberg and Hamilton. “No one expected Nico to win the world championship, but he did.”
