This year started well for Perez as he won two of the opening four Grand Prix in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. He also won the Sprint event in Baku to spark dreams of fighting Verstappen for the drivers’ championship. But the 33-year-old’s ambitions soon turned into a nightmare.

Perez has proved unable to maintain his place as Verstappen’s nearest on-track rival through the course of the season. He remains second in the standings but has scored just 258 points to his record-breaking teammates’ 524. He has also failed to finish on the podium since Italy.

Photo by Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty ImagesSergio Perez’s Formula 1 title dreams turned into a nightmare

But Brazil played host to a resurgence for Perez last weekend as he ended the Sprint in third. Only an inspired defensive effort from Fernando Alonso also denied Perez a podium finish in the Sao Paulo GP. He pushed the Aston Martin pilot to the line for P3, split by 0.053 seconds.

Perez will now hope to end this year on a high at the Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It has been far from the season he would have wanted after starting the year so well. Red Bull even face calls to drop Perez, who has a contract for 2024, given the way his form vanished.

While Perez finished on the podium over the Austrian, Hungarian, Belgian and Italian Grand Prix, he only finished P16 in Monaco, P6 in Canada, P6 in Great Britain, P8 in Singapore and P10 in Qatar. The Guadalajara native’s qualifying form was also disastrous for many months.

He would only qualify in P11 in Spain, P12 in Canada, P15 in Austria plus Britain and P13 in Singapore plus Qatar. Even when Perez qualified P5 in Japan, he ruined his race by crashing into Kevin Magnussen. Perez had crashed into Alex Albon in a similar way in Singapore, too.

What has Pierre Gasly said about Sergio Perez’s Red Bull woes?Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Gasly knows all too well how hard it can be to occupy the Red Bull garage with Verstappen. The Alpine pilot drove alongside the three-time Formula 1 champion for the first half of the 2019 season. Red Bull axed the Frenchman halfway through his first season with the squad.

So, to see Perez struggle with Red Bull in 2023, Gasly only wishes the best for his rival driver. He cannot say for sure why the Mexican’s form fell off a cliff. But Red Bull effectively building their team around Verstappen might play a part in why whoever drives beside him struggles.

“Never easy to go against probably the best driver at the moment, in combination with the best team and a team that is fully around him,” Gasly said, via quotes by Motorsport Week. “So, it’s obviously a tough job.

“I mean, Checo did very well at the start of the season. Obviously, for some reason, it’s not going as well now – reasons we don’t know. But, you know, I just wish him the best.”