Christian Horner's advice for Sergio Perez while competing with Max Verstappen

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner advised Sergio Perez to "forget about" Max Verstappen and focus on his racing to improve his performance.

Max Verstappen has dominated the entire grid this season to win his third consecutive F1 world championship. Although Sergio Perez, his teammate, performed rather poorly in the second half of 2023, he still has a 32-point lead over Lewis Hamilton to retain second place in the standings.

Despite being in second place, Perez seems to be nowhere close to Verstappen's driving, given they drove the same dominating RB19. 266 points separate the two and it is tough to point out exactly why this gap exists.

Speaking on the "eff won with DRS" podcast, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner labeled being Max Verstappen's teammate as the "toughest job" in the paddock, also adding Sergio Perez's excellency in the same.

"Being a teammate of Max is the hardest job in the paddock," he said.

"Checo has done a great job next to Max during the last three years."

He also advised that Sergio Perez should focus on his driving and data instead of Max Verstappen's. Horner feels that Perez focuses more on comparing himself to his teammate instead of improving his performance, which is why there have been plenty of issues this season.

"The problem is for Checo, he's trying to compare himself to Max and what he needs to do is forget about Max. [He needs to] just focus on himself, don't even look at his data. Just focus on being the best you can be."

"As we saw earlier in the year, sometimes that can be good enough."

Perez has won two races so far this season (Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan) while Verstappen has won the rest (except for Singapore). This highlights the huge gap between the two teammates. Even though the Mexican has a contract with the team for the 2024 season, there have been certain rumors of his replacement with another driver.

---

Max Verstappen does not consider F1 Las Vegas GP as a racing event

F1 is set to make its way to the United States for the third and final time this season for the inaugural Las Vegas GP that will be held this week. The event was revealed last year, marking the third race in the country in a single season, including Miami and Texas.

While there has been a wave of excitement amongst many, Max Verstappen seems the least interested in the race. Motorsport earlier quoted him as saying:

"First of all, I think we are there more for the show than the racing itself if you look at the layout of the track. But you know, I'm actually not that into it. I'm more like, I'll go there and do my thing and be gone again."

The track is made up mostly of long straights with a couple of corners and wide hairpins. The straights might make it tough for the cars to brake on time because of the cold temperatures at night on the Las Vegas Strip. The track temperature might make it difficult for drivers to warm up their tires.