Perez Responds To Former Team’s ‘Extreme Driving Style’ Comment

Sergio Perez, who joined Red Bull after being axed by Racing Point, has said his “extreme driving” helped him score a lot of points for his former team.

Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen at Red Bull - Formula1news.co.uk

Red Bull driver Sergio Perez has defended his driving style – insisting it helped him score a lot of points for his former team – after Aston Martin technical director Andrew Green said the Mexican has an “extreme driving style”.

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Green made the remark when asked if Sebastian Vettel’s driving style was leading to any difficulties for the newly rebranded Aston Martin F1 Team.

“I would say it is not as extreme as the driver he is replacing [Perez], who had a very extreme driving style,” he replied.

“It was very difficult to get right at all tracks. It shone at certain tracks and didn’t at others.”

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In response to Green’s comments, Perez has defended his driving style and suggested he isn’t sure what exactly he meant by “extreme.”

“Well, I think thanks to that extreme driving we managed to get a lot of points,” the Mexican said.

“In a way, it helped us a lot in the past, and we just have to keep improving every year to try to make it more complete.

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“With every car, you are going to be adapting yourself. It has to be very specific on which aspect you pick up. With extreme, it can mean a lot of things. Who knows?”

Red Bull looked strong at pre-season testing, with both Max Verstappen and Perez topping some of the sessions at Bahrain in the RB16B.

Commenting on his preparations ahead of his Red Bull debut later this month at the same circuit, Perez said it was a productive few days and he is looking forward to the season-opener on 28 March.

“It’s been a short pre-season and we are getting up to speed with everything as a team, with my engineers, with the car, with the setup, working through a lot of different setup options,” Perez said.

“It’s good that the start of the season is here so we have a bit of a reference. We just have a lot of things to go through to try to make it a bit better.”

Despite having a poor pre-season test, Mercedes will go into 2021 as Championship favourites, but Red Bull do look much more of a threat this year than they did last campaign, especially if Perez is able to roughly match Verstappen.

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