F1 pundit claims Red Bull have ‘broken’ Perez - and pinpoints when it happened

Perez heads into the summer break a staggering 125 points behind Verstappen after the Dutchman completed a comeback victory from sixth on the grid at the Belgian Grand Prix. 

Verstappen rapidly hunted down and passed early race-leader Perez by Lap 17, before opening up a huge 22-second lead over the Mexican as he cruised to an eighth win on the bounce. 

Former F1 driver Chandhok thinks Perez has not recovered from being beaten by Verstappen at the Miami Grand Prix, despite starting on pole, eight places ahead of his teammate. 

"I will say the only other thing they appear to have broken is their second driver in some ways," he told the Sky Sports F1 podcast.

"At the start of the year, I go back to the drive he put in, in Jeddah, but more importantly in Baku.

"Crofty [Sky Sports commentator, David Croft] and I were in the commentary box there saying he would have overtaken Max, let alone the strategy, he would have overtaken Max on track and won that race.

"And it was a proper convincing performance, admittedly at one of his strongest circuits on the calendar. But ever since he got overtaken on whatever it was, lap 41 [48] in Miami – it's just gone away from him.

"And you know, I look at what happened even at the weekend at Spa. Max got ahead of him and he put 22 seconds on him in 27 laps.

“That’s a big chunk of performance to put around a track where they are spending a lot of time at full throttle driving around in a straight line, essentially.”

Chandhok added: “To me, that is the cause of concern, the only cause of concern, in the Red Bull camp. 

“Is this the fourth teammate that Max has potentially broken? Who can they have alongside him?

“Or do they just say, ‘you know what, we don’t really need anyone to be challenging him, we’re happy for somebody to be half a second off the pace because our car is good enough for Max to be able to deliver at that level’”.

Red Bull’s Helmut Marko recently said Perez had finally “woken up” from his dream of becoming an F1 world champion. 

And Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft thinks Perez needs to accept his place at Red Bull. 

“I tend to agree with Helmut Marko on this one, whereby Sergio’s troubles started when he thought he could be a world champion and he thought he could win the world championship,” Croft said. 

“Miami, he was six points off Max starting on pole and I think that broke him a little bit. And I think the very next time in Monaco, where he crashed in Q1, absolutely broke Checo. 

“I think if he returns after the summer break happy to accept that he’s playing second-fiddle to Max Verstappen, happy to accept that second is what Red Bull need him to do, happy to accept that’s a good place to be and better than 18 other drivers on the grid, Checo will be absolutely fine. 

“But if he harbours ambitions to be better than Max Verstappen at the moment, and to beat Max Verstappen, he probably needs to be putting a bit more effort into it.”