At the Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paulo, Verstappen, who was already world champion, should have let his team-mate pass – according to the order from the pits – so that the Mexican, who was sixth in the race, had better chances of becoming runner-up in the world championship. But Verstappen refused. “I already told you last time. Don’t ask me that again, okay? Is that clear? I have given my reasons. And I stand by it,” Verstappen replied via radio.
The openly displayed quarrel in the world champion team even overshadowed the premiere winner George Russell in the media. The word donations from the Red Bull camp contributed to this. While consultant Helmut Marko, after an initial crisis meeting in which, according to team boss Christian Horner, the drivers shook hands, always repeated the same sentence (“The goal is for Perez to achieve second place in the world championship, and Max will do everything to to help him with it”) repeated, Perez became clearer. “If he now has two world titles, it’s thanks to me,” said the Mexican. Among other things, he alluded to the finale of the previous season, when he decisively stopped Lewis Hamilton so that Verstappen could even get to the Mercedes driver.
A deliberate accident?
After that, the relationship between the drivers was long considered almost cordial and Perez a fan favorite. The former flipped so far into the opposite this summer that the two don’t even follow each other on Instagram. But what was the reason for this?
Tom Coronel expressed a theory for this on Dutch television. According to the Verstappen family connoisseur, the Monaco Grand Prix in May, or more precisely its qualifying, could have been the trigger. There Perez spun in the entrance to the tunnel shortly before the end of the qualifying time, which is why nobody was able to set a better lap time. Perez is said to have done this on purpose, as in the narrow streets of Monaco a good starting place is half the battle. Critics claim that in the onboard recordings of the turner, even a short burst of gas can be heard in the curve, which, according to the argument, speaks for a deliberate maneuver. In any case, the Mexican, who started third directly in front of Verstappen, won the Grand Prix in Monaco.
The crash of Perez in the video
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When Nelson Piquet junior intentionally drove his Renault into the wall in Singapore in 2008 to help teammate Fernando Alonso win, the FIA banned team officials Pat Symonds and Flavio Briatore. Perez’s maneuver was more dangerous at times, as another pilot, Carlos Sainz, was involved in the accident in Monaco. Fear of draconian penalties offers a possible explanation for why the Red Bull inner circle has remained silent about the real reasons for the dispute. (pue)
Source: Nachrichten
