PÉREZ DOESN’T YET LOOK AN UPGRADE ON ALBON

ALEX ALBON COULD PROBABLY allow himself a wry smile. So often last season he was (rightly) castigated for failing to perform at the crucial moments, leaving Red Bull disadvantaged in its battle with Mercedes.

Red Bull replaced Albon with Sergio Pérez because it felt Pérez’s experience would make up the deficit, but Pérez’s first race with his new team was below par. Impressed by the way Red Bull takes “everything to the limit”, Pérez is so far struggling to find the limits of the RB16B himself. Partly, that’s to be expected. Pérez himself is on record saying it will take five races to get fully up to speed. But he would have expected to make Q3 and finish fourth as a minimum, and he achieved neither.

“I don’t quite feel the car is within me yet,” Pérez said after Friday practice. “I still have to think about what’s going on. It doesn’t seem to be coming naturally over one lap.”

The pattern repeated on Saturday, when Pérez missed Q3 by less than four hundredths of a second to Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin (palpably a slower car). Pérez lapped within four tenths of Max Verstappen – giving away most of his deficit in Turn 1 alone – but it was nowhere near enough.

Pérez impressed Red Bull with the calm and mature way he rebooted his car following a random shutdown on the formation lap. From there, Pérez raced cleanly and decisively through the field to finish fifth. A decent damage limitation job, but less than expected from a car with a significant pace advantage over everything bar the Mercedes.

“There are some specific problems to the way I’m driving,” Pérez admitted after the race. “I have to adjust my driving to the car. It’s taking me a while, because it’s very different to what I’m used to.”

In other words, Pérez needs more time to adapt to a car built around Verstappen’s extreme driving style – from a team that has a recent history of impatience. It’s down to Pérez to up his game and ensure history does not repeat.