Red Bull team principal Christian Horner believes being Max Verstappen’s team-mate is “the hardest job” in F1.

Since making his Red Bull debut in 2016, Verstappen has had four team-mates – Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, and currently, Sergio Perez.

All struggled against a driver now a three-time F1 champion, with Perez this year finding no answer to Verstappen following an initially strong start in winning two of the first four grands prix, and the opening sprint event in Azerbaijan.

En route to claiming his hat-trick of titles this year, Verstappen has won 15 of the 18 races, whilst has only managed five trips to the podium since winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

“Being Max Verstappen’s team-mate is probably the hardest job in the pitlane because he’s operating at such a high level, and it’s relentless,” assessed Horner.

“The mental aptitude you need to be able to deal with that, every time you see a piece of data, it’s like, ‘Wow! How did he do that? That takes a certain strength of character to be able to deal with that.

“The form that he’s in, and been in for the last three, four years, it would be tough for any driver on the grid.”

With Perez out of contract at the end of next year, the expectation is if he ensures another season such as this one, and fails to rediscover the form witnessed at the start of this season, then he will not be retained and Verstappen will have a fifth team-mate for 2025.

Asked by Speedcafe whether he would look at a possible replacement’s ‘mental aptitude and strength of character’ before making a decision,

“We’re certainly not short of options,” said Horner. “We’ve plenty of time to look and evaluate that, but there are so many factors involved in that.”

For Perez, Horner feels the Mexican driver’s problems began in the Miami Grand Prix in which he started from pole position, with Verstappen ninth after failing to set a time in Q3 due to a crash from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc that brought out the red flags.

Yet it was Verstappen who went on to win the race by just over five seconds from Perez.

Believing that affected Perez mentally and has resulted in the considerable deficits between the two over one lap in qualifying and race pace in a grand prix, Horner said: “With any sportsman, mental strength always plays a key role.

“There was a decisive moment this year, which was probably in Miami, where Checo had, if you like, an open goal. He’d won two races in Azerbaijan and Saudi (Arabia), and you could see his confidence was high.

“But Max winning that race, having been caught out by a red flag in quali, starting down in ninth, and then taking the lead, mentally that was quite a brutal one for Checo to deal with.

“On top of that, then came Monaco (where Perez crashed in qualifying), and then things compound.

“Max is just relentless. He’s then just hitting aces every race from there onwards.”