Paa wrote: ↑20 Aug 2024, 00:27
AR3-GP wrote: ↑20 Aug 2024, 00:14
It is somewhat pleasing to see that they are admitting to the failure of the development program and that it is not all Sergio Perez's fault. He attracted too much criticism but they never admitted that the updates were making the car worse. This should have come out much sooner. People tried to rewrite too much of history to understand why he was performing so poorly.
If they are confident in how destabilized the car is, then it means that there is logical justification for retaining him and it is not just poor team management. The car needs to be improved first. Verstappen already said to worry about the car before Perez, at least 2 months ago. This seems like a "come full circle" moment.
This only explains the worsening positions of Perez in qualy/race.
But the gap to his teammate is still inexcusable and the number of accidents are embarrassing to say the least. (Even accounting for the difficult driveability of the car.)
I know Max is really good, but I think there are some drivers around who could be much closer to him. It is easy to shine when you have a rocketship.
There are drivers that could do better than Perez and be closer to Max in this current unbalanced car. None of those drivers are available for a mid-season swap to Red Bull (Piastri, Norris, Leclerc, Russell, etc).
Red Bull has a long history of internal swaps going pear shaped (except Ver), so I'm not sure about parachuting Tsunoda, Ricciardo, or Lawson, into the car this weekend. The car is difficult and there are still many question marks about their abilities. We've seen how much Ricciardo can struggle. Lawson would be put into an Albon 2.0 situation. I don't really trust Tsunoda to deal with the pressure of a car that is not nice, developing his own racecraft, and trying to defend the WCC as the 2nd driver on such short notice.
Switching drivers mid-season in a championship year is also nuts. I don't know why people were expecting that like it's something that happens every day. Red Bull only ever did that in seasons where they weren't fighting for anything. The most damage control they can do is to fix the car and trust Perez to do his part again. The best time for a change would be at the end of the season.
A lion must kill its prey.