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Perez goes into one of the most crucial seasons of his F1 career with his time at Red Bull on the line as he is out of contract at the end of the year.
The 33-year-old knows he has a host of rival drivers eyeing his position for 2025, with team boss Christian Horner already stating it is the Mexican’s seat to lose.
The likes of AlphaTauri duo Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda are the first in line, whilst Williams’ Alex Albon will also be believing he now has the added experience to make a potential return.
For Perez, last season did not materialise the way he would have hoped after winning two of the first four grands prix following which he embarked on a downward trend that reached its nadir in Qatar.
After finishing almost six-tenths of a second adrift in the sole practice session, Perez then qualified 13th for the grand prix but was forced to start from the pit lane due to his RB19 requiring new power unit elements and chassis following a crash with Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg during the sprint.
Horner suggested after that weekend that Perez was in “a bit of a spiral”, and that he needed to “go back to basics” as they still had belief in his ability.
To a certain extent, Perez recovered as he went on to finish fourth in Austin, São Paulo, and Abu Dhabi, and third in Las Vegas, although blotted his copybook with a first-corner crash in his home race in Mexico when adopting an all-or-nothing approach to take the lead.
It was not until Qatar, however, that Perez finally took on board the fact he needed a different approach.
“I was really in such a hole that we got together after Qatar, and we understood a lot of things we were doing with the car,” said Perez, speaking to select media, including Speedcafe, in Abu Dhabi last year.
“That was really good on our side. It was bad that it happened, but in a way, it was also good because it strengthened our team quite a lot.”
As to why it took until the race in Doha for him to realise what was required, Perez said: “Because Qatar was the worst weekend I can remember for a while in the sport, probably my worst weekend ever in the sport.
“It was such a bad weekend that I felt like ‘I cannot be this bad’, that there was something else going on.
“So we took the time to understand what was going on with the car. I needed to understand a lot of things that we were doing and to go into a lot of detail.
“The problems we had made me understand a lot more about what I was doing with the setup, and which direction I needed to go when I got issues. It’s something that is definitely going to make us stronger.”
Perez is now hoping that after such discoveries, he will have a platform on which to build going into this year with the RB20 that will enable him to challenge Verstappen on a more consistent basis over the campaign.
“What we lacked (last year) is the progression,” said Perez. “We started the year on a high, on par with Max, but we were just unable to evolve through the season. If anything, we went backward at times.
“So that’s my main priority, to be able to progress through the season. However I start, it’s just important that weekend by weekend we keep evolving and keep getting better and better.”
