Patrons尊享｜英文寫作🤡｜Column writing｜What Lewis Hamilton can’t do in contemporary F1, can Sergio Perez do it? (Patreon)

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Lewis Hamilton may have failed to stop Max Verstappen from winning a third consecutive F1 driver’s title in 2023, however a Mexican is actually best-positioned to dethrone the defending champion.

With Red Bull having kept a perfect winning record after the first three F1 races, such rivals as Mercedes and Aston Martin have found it unrealistic to beat the Milton Keynes-based team to this year’s team title.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff told a media briefing before the Australian Grand Prix: “We're just two races in this year, but is it realistic when we look at the gaps [to catch Red Bull]? No, it’s not.”

If this is the case, then logic suggests the 2023 F1 driver’s title will exclusively be fought between Red Bull teammates Sergio Perez and Verstappen.

That happened when Mercedes started to dominate from the dawn of the current V6 hybrid power era in 2014. Their two drivers wholly filled the champion and the runner-up spots from 2014 to 2020, bar 2017 and 2018. From the start of their domination, it took Nico Rosberg three seasons to beat Hamilton.

Rosberg tightly lost to his childhood friend in 2014-15, but then finally overturned the table to win his first and only world title, by five points, before immediately retired at the end of 2016. Mercedes, meanwhile, won each of the three team’s titles in 2014-16 by some 300-point margin.

Back to the future.

In 2022 Red Bull won their first doubles since the end of 2013, as F1 tilted towards a more chassis-centric formula with the return of ground-effect cars. Interestingly, they dominated the last “chassis formula” in 2010-13. One cannot rule out another bull run in 2022-25, as F1’s next major overhaul won’t come until 2026, when it moves back to a more powertrain-centric formula.

So, is time on Perez’s side? Does he have the three years, like what Rosberg had, until 2025 to try to overthrow Verstappen?

In this column’s opinion, no. It may actually be now or never.

Unlike back then, F1’s new financial regulations and new aerodynamics research handicap are now here to close up the fields. And 2025 may likely see titles being fought among teams, instead of within a team, because performances are always likely to converge in the last years leading to new design rules setting in, as in 2008 and 2021.

Meanwhile, Perez is seeing the last two years of his contract in 2023-24. And intriguingly this is where Daniel Ricciardo comes in. That smiley face from Perth is arguably re-signed by Red Bull to make sure Perez race reasonably for the best benefits of the team in the period, like when Valtteri Bottas was put on one-year rolling contracts for five brutal seasons with Hamilton at Mercedes.

Let’s not forget Perez was not even fighting for the title last season, and lost to Verstappen by a mammoth 149 points. So, if the 33-year-old fails to become a champion in 2023 again, can he still do it in the last year of contract? If he can, he is a Rosberg, if not, a Bottas.

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