Sergio Perez having a bad weekend “helps” Max Verstappen’s confidence to win the F1 title even more, claims former F1 champion

Former F1 world champion Jenson Button feels Max Verstappen will be crowned the world champion this year. This is because his only competition until now, his teammate Sergio Perez, has failed to perform up to expectations in the past couple of races.

In the recent races, Perez seems to have lost his pace during race weekends. Even with the fastest car on the grid, he has been getting kicked out of Q2 in qualifying, which has affected his race result.

The 'King of the Streets', as he is called, has seemingly been in a loss of grid ever since the Miami Grand Prix. This, in turn, is helping Verstappen to gain more confidence in his title hopes, according to Button who told Motorsport.com:

"When Max sees his teammate have a tough weekend, it just helps his confidence, and three weekends – there’s no catching Max now, he’s gone, and the championship is definitely his."

Because of the dominant nature of Red Bull this season, Max Verstappen gained an early advantage in the championship. This also showed that Sergio Perez was his only competition for the title, and the two were expected to have quite a battle in the season.

However, with the performance that the Mexican has recently shown, Button feels that it is easy for Verstappen to walk away freely with the world championship now.

"What happens to Checo? Hopefully, he bounces back. We all want people to take it to Max. We want to see good racing from Checo."

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Max Verstappen expected to break Hamilton's Formula 1 records

F1 Grand Prix of Canada

Ever since Max Verstappen won his first Formula 1 race, he has been breaking quite a few records. His maiden win made him the youngest F1 Grand Prix winner, and since then, he has gone on to break multiple records.

Recently, Red Bull's team advisor, Dr Helmut Marko, mentioned that the double world champion is also expected to break many of Lewis Hamilton's Formula 1 records.

He said this by quoting Michael Schumacher's example, explaining how it seemed to be impossible back in the day to break the records the German had set with Ferrari. However, as Hamilton broke them and rewrote history, he expects the Dutchman to do the same.

"When Schumacher retired, I thought: 'Wow, his record will stand forever'. But then came the incredible performances of Mercedes and Lewis. Without being too hopeful, but I believe that anything is possible."