Until the recently concluded Australian GP, Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez were going neck and neck in the championship battle. The Dutchman led his teammate by just 1 point after the second race of the season in Jeddah. However, the Mexican Minister of Defence almost certainly lost the chance to match his partner in the points tally after crashing out of the qualifying in just the first session. Almost instantly, he lashed out at the team for failing to fix an issue that he complained about in FP3 as well. Turns out, that was just an excuse to cover up his shortcomings.

After Perez bowed out of qualifying after the incident, fans too blamed Red Bull for sabotaging him. Some felt it was a result of the ongoing possible rift between their two drivers. Veteran F1 journalist Peter Windsor recently put all those rumors to rest, disclosing the chatter from the RB garage.

In a recent video on his YouTube channel, Windsor told, “I was talking in the qualifying video yesterday about Sergio saying there was something wrong with the car and they didn’t fix it. The locking, the brake locking for qualifying and it happened again in qualifying. And then the team in the same press release said we will be checking the car over and if there is anything wrong, we’ll of course put it right.”

“Emphasis on the word ‘if’ for sure. So it proved. They changed the brake pads in parc ferme but I spoke with a couple of their engineers and they both said, ‘absolutely nothing wrong with the car whatsoever’. So, Sergio, I think, [is] incorrect in saying that to the press. But you know that’s how he is. At the end of the day, there was nothing wrong with that car.”

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Checo finished P5 after starting the race from the back of the grid. Some glorious overtakes saw him take the Driver of the Day. However, Windsor felt he should have started from the front of the grid.

What Sergio Perez said after qualifying

Speaking after the qualifying, Perez used some stern words against his team for failing to address the ongoing issue. The issue, that we now know, was perhaps one in his own mind.

Sky Sports quoted him saying, “It was really bad, a terrible day. We had this issue in P3. We thought we had fixed it but obviously we didn’t so I really hope we are able to fix it come the race or it will be very difficult to race like this.”

“I don’t want to go too much into detail, I don’t think it is worth it for us. We have to work together as a team to overcome this problem.”

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Do you think Windsor is correct in his assessment of Perez?