Perez needs to get up to speed earlier: 'I need better Fridays'

Difficulty building confidence

With a car that is fighting for the championship, more should be possible than one win and a podium finish. Perez's results at Red Bull Racing have been erratic, putting even his seat for 2022 under discussion. The Mexican himself believes he can close the gap on his Dutch teammate this season.

According to Perez, the key to this lies with the first free practice sessions. "I need better Fridays," he told The Race. "I need to build the knowledge with the car to get more out of it on Friday. What I lack now is the consistency in terms of being able to leave the garage in VT1 and have confidence in the car to know what to expect. It takes me quite a bit to build that up over the weekend."

Perez happy at Red Bull

Despite the disappointing results, Perez is happy at Red Bull. "I feel good. I'm happy with my improvements and I think the results are probably worse than the speed. Of course, I arrived at a team capable of competing for the world championship straight away, so I didn't have that build-up in it."

Perez's situation compares well with Daniel Ricciardo 's at McLaren. The Australian is also struggling to adapt to his new car. "We're in the same boat in terms of how different our cars and our power sources are from what we're used to," Perez acknowledged. "A different powerplant also means a different driving style and different techniques, also in the race. We had to adapt to probably the biggest difference out there."

So Perez knows what he has to do in the remaining twelve races of the season; narrow the gap to Verstappen. Although Perez still sees that in a pretty positive light. "I'm already very, very close to Max in terms of race pace at some moments. It's just getting consistency and building that faster over the weekend. That will be the most important thing."