Max Verstappen not someone to take being out-qualified by Sergio Perez 'lying down', claims former F1 world champion

Max Verstappen is being given preferential treatment from Red Bull as compared to his teammate Sergio Perez with regards to qualifying pace, according to former F1 world champion Damon Hill.

Since starting his F1 career with Scuderia Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri), Verstappen is yet to be beaten on a qualifying countback against a teammate over the course of a season.

Now, paired up with Sergio Perez at Red Bull, that trend is still ongoing. It was 20-2 in the Dutchman's favor last season. The record appears to be under threat after the Mexican outqualified Verstappen in Jeddah, Monte Carlo, and Baku.

The 24-year-old world champion was resurgent in Montreal and brought the count to 6-3 in the current campaign as we approach the 2022 F1 British GP this weekend.

Speaking on the F1 Nation podcast in the lead up to the race at Silverstone, Damon Hill surmized that Verstappen's good record was down to him being the alpha in the Austrian team. The Briton said:

“Max [Verstappen] has found something because he dominated that weekend [in Canada] and with no sign of Sergio [Perez] looking to be threatening. They’ve done something. I get the feeling they’ve done something to help him because he’s not the sort of person who would have taken being out-qualified by Sergio lying down.”

He continued:

“So I think that they’ve tried to work on giving him what he really needs. And it could be that they’ve helped the front end of the car. It looked like he got rid of some of that understeer, and it could do him wonders.”

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Max Verstappen in firm control of 2022 F1 World Championship fight, feels Mika Hakkinen

Max Verstappen is firmly in control of the 2022 F1 World Championship battle after nine rounds of racing, according to former driver Mika Hakkinen.

After nine rounds of racing in the ongoing campaign, the reigning world champion has secured seven podium places, with six of them being wins.

In comparison, Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez has bagged only one win and Ferrari man Charles Leclerc has won only twice, in Bahrain and Melbourne. Incidentally, Verstappen retired from both those races.

Having turned the tide in the championship fight after falling behind in the early stages of the season, Max Verstappen now has the wind in his sail heading into Silverstone, as per Hakkinen. In his column for sports betting firm Unibet, the Finn wrote after the 2022 F1 Canadian GP:

“We did not have any doubt that Max [Verstappen] is in control of the championship before the weekend and the result in Montreal confirms that Red Bull’s package is simply too strong at the moment. They have straight-line speed, good balance, and a car that Max can clearly work with on every type of circuit.”

Hakkinen, who won two consecutive world championships with McLaren in 1998 and 1999, went on to write:

“Montreal is the kind of circuit where you need a little bit of everything – good confidence under braking and low-speed performance, but strong traction for the straights where you can overtake – and Max’s car looked brilliant everywhere.”

However, the Finn feels Verstappen will need to be wary about the potential reliability issues that could derail his charge for a second world championship.

Catch Max Verstappen next at the British GP on Sunday, July 3, 2022.