Windsor saw Perez mistake: 'Verstappen didn't want another problem with him'

While Max Verstappen crossed the finish line as the dominant winner, Sergio Perez finished third at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. As a result, the Mexican driver lost second place in the championship to Charles Leclerc. Peter Windsor thinks Red Bull Racing wanted to avoid problems between the two teammates during the race by bringing Perez in for a second pit stop.

Verstappen was unstoppable at the Yas Marina circuit. The Dutchman managed his tyres well and did not run into any problems. From the lead position, however, he could do little for Perez, who was fighting for P2 in the drivers' championship. Leclerc ended up coming in for new tyres only once, while Perez was put on a two-stop by his team. In the end, he did not manage to overtake the Ferrari driver in the closing stages of the race.

"Probably a mistake I think by Checo, to get on the radio on lap 29 to say: Max is holding me up, which was like a red rag to a Bull, because at that moment, of course Max immediately started to reduce his lap times and the gap between Max and Checo started to increase. When that message gets out, he thinks: right, this is starting to get serious now. I’m not going to have another issue with Checo," Windsor said in his new YouTube video.

Red Bull wanted to avoid trouble

After the fiasco in Brazil, where Verstappen refused to let his teammate pass, the Formula 1 expert thinks that Red Bull wanted to make sure in Abu Dhabi that problems between the two drivers would not arise again. Therefore, Perez was still brought in for a second stop.

"I think at that point, Red Bull felt just to avoid any sort of issues in this race, because no matter what they say, no matter what the smiles said before the race about the relationship between Max and Checo, inevitably if they got close, there might have been some issues," Windsor continued.

The chance of P2 in the championship was ultimately thrown away with that second pit stop, as Perez did not get close to Leclerc for an overtake. Red Bull did manage to avoid further problems between the Mexican and Verstappen. "It was a strategy mentioned by Pirelli as a potential race-winning strategy, so Red Bull could always argue: we split the strategies between the two drivers."