{"id":414289,"date":"2026-01-15T09:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T09:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/414289\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T09:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T09:09:10","slug":"charles-leclerc-claim-dismisses-nonsense-sergio-perez-red-bull-f1-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/414289\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc claim dismisses &#8216;nonsense&#8217; Sergio Perez Red Bull F1 comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Comments from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/tag\/perez\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sergio Perez<\/a> regarding his time alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull have been rubbished as \u201cnonsense\u201d by former Ferrari <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/series\/single-seater\/formula-1\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Formula 1<\/a> manager Peter Windsor.<\/p>\n<p>Perez, who will mark a comeback in the paddock with Cadillac in 2026, made some pointed remarks about his time as team-mates with Verstappen. <\/p>\n<p>The Mexican driver partnered up with the Dutchman between 2021 and 2024, winning five Grands Prix with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/tag\/redbull\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Milton Keynes-based team<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>However, he bowed out of the team in dismal circumstances \u2013 failing to consistently match up with the 28-year-old. In fact, his final season with Red Bull saw him a staggering 285 points behind Verstappen. <\/p>\n<p>Speaking on the Crack podcast, Perez had claimed that Red Bull were only running two cars because they had to. For all intents and purposes, the team was only going to service and advance Verstappen.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/2026\/01\/06\/why-sergio-perez-was-doomed-to-fail-at-red-bull-if-i-was-faster-than-max-it-was-a-problem\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">He went as far as saying<\/a>, \u201cAt <a href=\"https:\/\/www.redbullracing.com\/int-en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Red Bull <\/a>everything was a problem. If I was very fast, it was a problem. If I was slower than Max, it was a problem. So everything was a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Windsor has now hit back at the Mexican, calling him \u201cthe perfect victim\u201d. \u201cI think he\u2019s being a perfect victim, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a grain of truth in it,\u201d he said on the Cameron CC podcast.<\/p>\n<p>The Briton believes that Perez was never a match for Verstappen, nor worthy of having a race seat at a top and dominant team like Red Bull.<\/p>\n<p>He cited how someone like Charles Leclerc could have easily won a championship alongside Verstappen. Perez just wasn\u2019t cut out for it. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u00a0think if you had Charles Leclerc in the other\u00a0Red Bull\u00a0in the last five or six years I think he would have been pretty successful,\u201d Windsor asserted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe might even have won a championship against Max. That\u2019s not to say he\u2019s as good as Max right now, but if you had a class driver in the other car, of course he\u2019d be very near Max.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reality is they\u2019ve never had a class driver alongside Max, apart from the brief period when Daniel Ricciardo was there.\u00a0Red Bull are quite capable of producing two very competitive cars, as we saw in the Mark Webber-Sebastian Vettel days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s all nonsense and it\u2019s all Perez trying to justify not being as quick as Max and basically saying \u2018if they had built the car around me I would have won four world championships and Max would have been nowhere. Is that what he\u2019s trying to say? I don\u2019t know. But I think he\u2019s wrong there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Sergio-Perez-Peter-Windsor-1024x576.webp.webp\" alt=\"Peter Windsor [pictured interviewing Sergio Perez, 2015] has opined that the Mexican's comments are &quot;nonsense&quot;\" class=\"wp-image-235309\"  \/>Peter Windsor [pictured interviewing Sergio Perez, 2015] has opined that the Mexican\u2019s comments are \u201cnonsense\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sergio Perez should be thanking his lucky stars for Red Bull F1 chance <\/p>\n<p>Windsor was pretty blunt in his assessment of Perez\u2019s capabilities strapped into the Red Bull. <\/p>\n<p>The Briton claimed that Perez needed to be more grateful for the chance he had with the team. Referencing the limited success Perez enjoyed with the team, including winning the Monaco Grand Prix in 2022, Windsor urged the Mexican to be just a little bit more grateful. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell above his talent level probably he won grands prix, he should be saying \u2018I just can\u2019t believe how lucky I was to be driving for Red Bull when I did, I was so happy to be there, what a great team, I was there for the golden days with Jonathan Wheatley and Christian [Horner] and Adrian [Newey]\u2019,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy is he not saying that? Saying thank you very much Red Bull for those grand prix wins.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Windsor believes that Perez let the adulation bestowed on him by the Mexican press go to his head. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the same old story. When he won a few races early on and all the Mexican press got excited about how he could win the championship and beat Max, and he believed it all!,\u201d Windsor continued. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course the press are going to say that, because that\u2019s what they do. But for Perez to believe it all, and he\u2019s believing it all now I guess. It\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/2026\/01\/12\/ex-f1-driver-lambasts-sergio-perez-for-recent-red-bull-remarks\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ex-F1 driver lambasts Sergio Perez for recent Red Bull remarks<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comments from Sergio Perez regarding his time alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull have been rubbished as \u201cnonsense\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,13275,817,806,805,803,804,15196,2072,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-414289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-charles-leclerc","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-redbull","17":"tag-sergio-perez","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}