Sergio Perez’s father, Antonio Pérez Garibay, has claimed Max Verstappen’s Red Bull was “not the same” car as the one Sergio Perez drove last season.

Perez’s Red Bull career was cut short last year when Red Bull made the call to drop the Mexican driver after his F1 2024 struggles.

Does Max Verstappen have a different car to his team-mate?

Scoring only a third of Verstappen’s points, Perez finished the championship down in eighth place while his team-mate was crowned the Drivers’ Champion for a fourth successive season.

Perez’s disparity in points in a campaign in which he scored just nine in the final eight Grand Prix weekends cost the team in the Constructors’ standings, Red Bull falling to third.

It also cost him his race seat as he was axed in December, with Red Bull promoting Liam Lawson in his stead.

But already Lawson’s days in the Red Bull are over, the team dropping him down to Racing Bulls after just two races.

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The New Zealander struggled during his brief stint as he suffered three Q1 exits and failed to score a single point. It was, however, still a decision that blindsided the driver.

“It was definitely a shock, honestly,” he told Sky F1. “It’s not something that I saw coming. The discussions we were having as well, I think, weren’t really leaning in this direction, so it was definitely not something that I sort of expected.”

Lawson has been replaced by Yuki Tsunoda, who will make his Red Bull debut at his home race in Japan.

But as the post mortem continues in the media, Papa Perez has claimed Verstappen has a different car to his team-mates – or at least he did last year.

“What I’m about to say will cause a lot of commotion, but the car with number 1 [Verstappen] was not the same as the car with number 11 (Perez],” he claimed on the Formula de 2 podcast.

“And if you were to put the driver of car 1 in car 11, he won’t get out of Q1 in qualifying either and he won’t pass the car with number 1. If you put the driver from car 1 in car 11, he doesn’t do any better.

“So it does lie with the car. The cars were not the same.

“I hope things are different today and that in Japan Yuki has the best car Red Bull can give him.

“They cannot disappoint the Japanese fans, they have to give Yuki the best means to fight. And so he has to have the same car.”

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