F1: Sergio Perez acknowledges his title aspirations are over and is focused on placing second in the drivers' championship.
Perez is presently ranked second among drivers, trailing Verstappen by 177 points but only 33 points ahead of Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes.
Even though he is still mathematically in the running for the Formula One Drivers' Championship this year, Sergio Perez is concentrating on placing second in advance of a crucial weekend in Qatar.
Perez's goal now is to give Red Bull its first one-two finish in the drivers' championship with Max Verstappen poised to win his third consecutive title, likely in Saturday's 100km dash.
Perez told reporters at the Lusail circuit, "It (second place overall) is crucial since that's the best I can get now. "I believe that all of the drivers here want to have the best season possible."
Furthermore, I think it's crucial to end the season on a positive note. Since that only benefits the start of the following year. The 33-year-old continued, "So, to me, it's really important to get on top of it and make sure that we are able to produce in the next six races.
From 2010 through 2013, Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel won four consecutive championship doubles, but the team never ended a season with their drivers in first and second place overall. In 2012, Mark Webber, an Australian, finished sixth and third three times.
Perez is presently in second place, 177 points adrift of Verstappen but only 33 points ahead of Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes. Perez finished third last year despite finishing behind Ferrari's Charles Leclerc by three points.
Verstappen has won 13 of the 16 races this season, while the Mexican driver has won twice. Verstappen had a winning streak of 10 straight races before the Singapore Grand Prix last month put an end to it.
Verstappen won the race, placing Perez seventh, and Perez failed to score in Japan the next weekend, leaving Verstappen with just three more points needed to win the championship.
I did not do well in Asia. Singapore and Suzuka, of course," Perez added. "However, I believe we now understand a lot more about what went wrong at Suzuka. So, this weekend, I do anticipate being in a much better situation.
"It's mostly the approach we adopted when setting up the automobile. We overplanned a couple things, but now that we're looking back, we can see where it went wrong," the Red Bull driver said.
Perez has a strong track record in the Middle East. He won his first race there with Racing Point (now Aston Martin) in Bahrain in 2020 and won his first pole there last year. This year in Saudi Arabia, he won.
