Should we consider Sergio Pérez as a candidate for the title?

Facts : In Barcelona, ​​last Sunday, the paddock left a Sergio Pérez victim of team instructions. A week later, it was in tears that we found him on the top step of the podium in the Principality. With a better race strategy, the Mexican dominated the Team which has accumulated strategic errors and above all a Max Verstappen less visible. This victory allows Checo Pérez to come back to 15 points behind the reigning World Champion.

YES, by Bastien Cheval

It is often said that a victory in Monaco is the greatest of all. And that a driver who knows how to assert himself on the streets of the Principality can climb the highest step of all the other podiums on the planet. If all this is true (and I firmly believe in it!), then it will be particularly interesting to examine how Sergio Pérez will digest his princely success. The Mexican surprised everyone and displayed the verve of the best. Does that make him a candidate for the title?

First of all, let us note that Pérez displays a quality fundamental to the supreme quest: regularity. Since his inaugural retirement from Bahrain, the fault of which lies with an RB18 that was still too young, the Mexican has never finished higher than 4th place and has lost a minimum of points along the way.

But there is a major problem with Checo's glorious hopes: Max Verstappen. Beyond his extraordinary talent, the Dutchman is, as we know, at home at Red Bull, which made him sign one of the most lucrative contracts in the history of sport, until 2028. Milton Keynes probably didn't do all that to settle for a silver medal. Last year, Pérez played his role of lieutenant to General Max to perfection to bring him to the world title except that, this time, Pérez is clearly in the game, with 15 small points behind his teammate. And it is not only in the ranking that their positions have come closer, Checo is allowing itself to compete on the track with the Batavian. Who would have believed it ?

Pérez, with his mountain of experience, knows that Red Bull is a one-man team: whether it is Sebastian Vettel facing Mark Webber, or Max Verstappen facing all the talents he has sketched (Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon). The temptation to break the established pattern must be strong... Especially since Sergio Pérez knows, at 32, that he will perhaps have no better opportunity than this season to write his name in immortal golden letters in the great book of the Formula 1. The Mexican has the best car on the field, the best strategists on the grid, the driving skills, the experience and the confidence to challenge for the title. It remains to be seen if we will give him the opportunity…

Sergio Pérez became this Sunday the first Mexican to win in the Principality © Photo Antonin Vincent / DPPI

NO, by Tom Trichereau

In the Principality, Sergio Pérez once again demonstrated the extent of his range by winning on one of the most difficult routes on the calendar. Having his name on the prize list of a Grand Prix as prestigious as that of Monaco should legitimately allow him to become one of the candidates for the crown.

Although the Mexican probably has the best car from the paddock, he is not the only one who wants to claim the world title in Abu Dhabi next November within his team. At his side, or rather in front of him, is simply the reigning world champion, Max Verstappen. The Batavian has demonstrated since the start of the season that he is playing in another category if we put the reliability problems of his RB18 – beyond his control – aside. Yes, Sergio Pérez dominated his teammate throughout the weekend. But that's still just one round of a 22-round clash.

And as if that wasn't enough, the two fighters are far from being placed on equal footing. Remember, less than a week ago, the higher authorities of the Austrian team cooled Sergio Pérez's enthusiasm by giving him the unofficial role of second driver in Catalonia. A call to order that Checo had hardly appreciated, but faced with team instructions what can he really do, other than carry them out. And it is this glass ceiling that stands above the 32-year-old driver, his team does not want it to be him who finishes at the top of the championship at the end of the accounts

Imagine the failure that a coronation for the Mexican could represent at Red Bull which, as with Sebastian Vettel in the past, is trying to build Verstappen hegemony in Formula 1. So yes the RB18 seems more suited to the driving style of Sergio Pérez than last year's RB16B. But like the honorable service rendered in the Dutchman's quest for the first title at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, his suit within Red Bull is cut out for the second step of the podium and like his predecessors, Checo is condemned to wait quietly in the shadow of the new winning machine at Red Bull named Max Verstappen.  

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