F1 News: Sergio Perez Thinks Red Bull Understands Their Problems Ahead of the Italian Grand Prix

Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and the entire Red Bull team find themselves in uncharted territory ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.

McLaren is a real title contender.

Lando Norris’ dominant victory at the Dutch Grand Prix prompted Verstappen and other key Red Bull figures to sound the alarm not only for the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship — where Red Bull’s lead now sits at just 30 points — but also for the Drivers’ Championship. While Verstappen holds a 70-point lead going into that race, Norris’ impressive victory at Zandvoort signaled to Red Bull that even that lead may not be safe.

After the Dutch Grand Prix, Verstappen indicated that the team still has a lot of work to do on the RB20 in order to compete with McLaren.

While Verstappen said the team needed to ‘understand’ their current limitations, teammate Sergio Perez believes Red Bull now understands those issues and can focus on solving the problem and closing the gap.

“Well, I think what (McLaren) showed in Zandvoort was really, really strong,” Perez said during Thursday’s FIA press conference. “I think it’s the strongest performance we’ve seen from McLaren in a long time. At the same time, I think we have every hope to believe that Zandvoort is probably a very bad circuit for us in terms of the wind, that we suffer more from it than others. We’ll see. We’re coming to a very different circuit and we expect them to still be the benchmark. Hopefully we can get closer and be in the race.

“The most important thing for us now is that we understand the problems with the car. We understand them. It’s just a question of how fast and what solutions we have to solve them,” Pérez continued. “But we know exactly where we are with the car. We know what the problem is. And hopefully in the coming weekends, even before this weekend, we can make a lot of progress.”

Despite those struggles at the Dutch Grand Prix, Perez still managed to secure sixth place, his best result since his P4 at the Miami Grand Prix. The Red Bull driver noted that his current “understanding” of the RB20’s issues played a part in achieving that result.

“I think understanding the problem helped a lot because I think after Miami we were a bit in limbo and we were working with a car and we didn’t understand what was going on,” Pérez added. “And I think once you understand the problem you can drive around it. And I think for me that made a bit of difference. But now the most important thing is to be able to solve the problem.”

Monza offers Red Bull some hope, given their recent history at the legendary circuit. A year ago, Verstappen and Perez claimed the front row of the Italian Grand Prix, the sixth time they’ve accomplished that feat during their impressive 2023 campaign.

But this is a new season and the challenges that McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes bring are significant.