Concerns over Verstappen and Perez gap: 'Red Bull would be the fourth team'

Question marks over the gap between Verstappen and Perez

Perez himself realises it all too well: he needs to improve, and fast. Former Aston Martin strategist and current strategy analyst for Sky Sports and F1TV, Bernie Collins, sees that Red Bull has a big problem. "There’s big questions being asked there, and I don’t know where it falls down. Is it that Checo is just not good enough, not working well enough, the car setup isn’t in the right place? My understanding is the car is quite hard to drive," Collins said in Sky Sports'F1 podcast.

"The gap’s quite big and then I think from a points point of view, if we just look at points at the end of a race the gap’s pretty shocking in terms of the contribution of the Red Bull team. The gap of X over 10s in qualifying aren’t necessarily going to worry Red Bull too much because they know that the Verstappen is so strong but the points at the end of the race are a big problem because that is what will lose them the world championship as a team," the analyst continued.

"If the second car not scoring points, that’s again even in midfield teams, that’s what loses you that the positions. If the two cars are not consistently scoring points and you know if Max DNFs or he has a race that he needs to take a new engine penalty Checo at this stage doesn’t appear like he’s going to be there to pick up the pieces," Collins adds.

"Red Bull have had a good head start but if it was only starting now and if you had if you didn’t have Verstappen and you had two Perez’s that would rank Red Bull probably as the fourth fastest team. That is massively detrimental to your income and how your team operates," Collins said.

This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Crothall.