F1 | Horner: “After Miami Perez lost confidence, it was a hard blow”

The start of the 2023 season saw Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez collect two victories each in the first four rounds. The Dutchman had managed to achieve success in Bahrain and Australia, while the Mexican had won in Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia, although in this last stage Verstappen was forced to start from fifteenth place due to a technical problem in qualification.

However, it was the Baku event that was significant for both pilots, albeit for different reasons. On the one hand, for Perez it represented a weekend of great motivation, one of his best races of the season, while for Verstappen it was an opportunity to understand what to refine in terms of setup and driving style, an issue on which there were still some elements to fix.

For this reason the two arrived in Miami with the same ambition, but driven by different feelings. After free practice, the Hasselt driver was the great candidate for pole, but a mistake in the first attempt of Q3 and the yellow flags in the final minutes of the session forced him to start from ninth place, while Perez took pole. For the Mexican it was a great opportunity to achieve his third victory of the season and take the lead in the world championship, given that he had arrived at the Miami event with only a six point deficit.

However, on Sunday Verstappen was able to re-establish the hierarchies by making a good comeback on a strategy opposite to that chosen by his teammate, who in turn was unable to fully exploit the average in the first part of the race, also due to fear of graining. An upward climb materialized with the decisive overtaking on the main straight about ten laps from the end, which then earned him the stage success. A victory so significant that the Dutchman himself then included it among his three most important triumphs of the season, both for the way in which it was achieved and for the technical impact it gave to his championship. From that moment on, in fact, the three-time world champion won all the remaining events of the world championship, with the exception of Singapore, where Carlos Sainz won with Ferrari.

According to Christian Horner, that Miami Grand Prix represented the turning point in the championship, positively for Verstappen and negatively for Perez: “In the first four or five races [Perez] it was very, very strong,” Horner said in an exclusive interview with Motorsport.com.

“And after Miami, I think losing that race was a psychological blow for him. Then, after that, Q1 in Monaco, with a mistake. Confidence is a fundamental thing in this sport and I think the momentum he had accumulated, because his races in Saudi Arabia and Azerbajan were truly exceptional, he was impressed.”

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing, 2nd position, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 1st position, congratulated upon arrival in Parc Fermé

“I mean, in Azerbaijan he made a clean sweep with a win in the sprint and the Grand Prix. Then, when we came back to Europe, he started to disintegrate. And then there was a kind of peak and trough.”

From this point of view, the work carried out behind the scenes before the Qatar GP was also fundamental, with a long and intense session on the simulator which helped him find some elements lost during the season. Although Verstappen remained out of reach, the Mexican began to find himself after a particularly difficult period.

“For example, he had a brilliant race in Monza, he had an excellent race in Zandvoort in the wet, then unfortunately he started making mistakes when he increased the pressure on himself. But it was good to see that he recovered his his form at the end of the season. And, of course, to reach second place in the championship – which he never did and which we never did – and get a 1-2 finish.”