ROUND 11: 🇦🇹 Austria
FORMULA 1 MSC CRUISES AUSTRIAN GRAND PRIX 2025
Circuit stats
- First Grand Prix: 1996
- Number of laps: 71
- Circuit Length: 4.318 km
- Race Distance: 306.452 km
- Lap record: 1:05.619 Carlos Sainz (2020)
- 2024 winner: George Russel
Track Map
Karun Chandhok on sky commentary just said Red Bull hasn’t had a second driver pushing for results since Riccardo. How do people forget how good Perez actually was. It’s clear that Max is just on another level, but Perez worked some miracles to be as close as he was (at times)
I find it easy to forget Perez’s highs, as they get overshadowed by the long, downwards spiral he was on at the end. In contrast, Ricciardo left while being closer to an equal to Max. That’s the image my memory is painting, anyway.
I was thinking the same thing. He was even fighting Verstappen at the start of the season a few years back. (I forget which year it was, but Perez won almost every street race I think)
I kind of think it’s both. There was a time - when the car wasn’t undriveable - where he was legitimately close to Max. But there was also a quite long period where he was quite terrible.
Red Bull is slowly becoming shit and Max, love him or hate him, is a such a good driver that he is less affected by it. Checo, Liam, and now Yuki are all getting tanked by the car and even Max is having trouble holding on now. Then Liam got into a Racing Bull and while they’re not the fastest he looks just fine.
It’s plain to see that the car is the problem.