Checo Pérez says he was told they missed him at Red Bull.
The 2025 season has not been the best for Red Bull Racing , as the Formula 1 (F1) team has had complications in finding the ideal partner for the Dutchman Max Verstappen after the departure of the Mexican Sergio "Checo" Pérez . Neither Liam Lawson nor Yuki Tsunoda have lived up to what the Guadalajara native achieved as the second driver for the Austrian team.
In a recent interview with Memo Rojas, Checo Pérez confessed that someone within the team told him they missed him. When asked if he deserved an apology for the way he left Red Bull, Pérez insisted he didn't.
"In the end, sport is like that and Decisions were made because there was too much pressure they themselves put on themselves. But I know that deep down they regret it, and I have it from a very reliable source… In a multiverse (I would return to Red Bull), but it's very complicated," he said on the Desde el Paddock podcast.
Contrary to rumors that Pérez and Verstappen had a bad relationship, the Mexican assured that they are good friends, the same reason why he is not happy about Red Bull's poor current performance, which occupies fourth place in the F1 constructors' championship.
"I have very good friends there. People think I'm happy (that things are going badly for them), but not at all. Max deserves all the success and to have a competitive car because he's a great driver. Very few people know how he works. We had a great team that gradually fell apart," he added.
However, he acknowledged that he was not protected by the team in the face of criticism from the press.
"I was also an important point, because when I signed a contract in Monaco, everyone was talking about my future. It would have been so easy for the team to protect me, but that wasn't the case. No one was talking about anything else but me anymore. There was a lot of pressure on my side of the garage and that trickled down to the engineers, which ended up costing us a lot," mentioned.
Finally, he talked about the problems he suffered due to the difference between Max Verstappen's car and his own.
"In 2023 we started with a very good car for both drivers. I was fighting for the championship with Max race by race, but we arrived in Barcelona with the adjustments and in the first practice I was 1 second behind, then 7 tenths and everything started to get very complicated. (…) I was able to adapt to the car from the start, but when I got a change in the wind, rain or any other weather situation it was uncontrollable because I had to drive the Red Bull very present, when drivers do everything on automatic. Max himself told them, they went in this direction that became increasingly difficult for me," concluded the Jalisco native.
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