Sergio Pérez and his teammate, Max Verstappen, were left out of the race in the final laps of the opening round of the Bahrain Grand Prix due to a fuel pump problem, thus missing out on a secure second and fourth position .
In the third round of the campaign, at the Australian GP, the current world champion suffered another setback in his car with 20 laps to go, forcing him to retire. With this abandonment, the Dutchman was 46 points behind the world leader, the Ferrari driver, Charles Leclerc.
Verstappen called the reliability issues “unacceptable” after the race, saying he could not think of repeating his feat from 2021 due to breakdowns in the energy drink team.
The other member of the Austrian garage, Sergio Pérez , was able to inherit second place in Melbourne after the Dutchman’s withdrawal, but admitted that reliability setbacks remain one of the most talked about topics in Red Bull.
“It’s a concern,” said the Mexican. “We have already lost a lot of points in these first three races which, in the end, can make a big difference in the championship, so we are aware of that.”
“Everyone, both in Milton Keynes and here, is working hard to find solutions. We’ll see, and I’m sure we’ll turn things around, and hopefully we can start again from scratch when we get back to Europe,” he continued.
The retirements have seen Red Bull lose a lot of ground to Ferrari in the championship at the start of 2022, and they are third with 55 points, 49 units less than Maranello and 10 behind Mercedes, who are second.
Charles Leclerc dominated the race in Australia with the F1-75, taking pole position, the fastest lap and leading all the laps, thus achieving his first Grand Chelem. That is why the Mexican thought in Melbourne that it was “the first weekend in which Ferrari is one step ahead” after Red Bull had to study a lot the behavior of the RB18 to find the correct configuration.
“They were on another level,” Perez said. “I think we also went a bit wrong with the balance, we took a bit of a wrong direction, so I think you have to do a good study.”
“I am sure that we will learn a lot from this grand prix because it seems that we have some difference in tires with Ferrari”, sentenced the one from Guadalajara.
