Former Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer takes another look at the title fight in 2025. Lando Norris narrowly came out on top during the Abu Dhabi GP, becoming world champion for the first time with a two-point lead over Max Verstappen. According to Szafnauer, this would have ended very differently if Red Bull had kept Sergio Pérez: ‘Then Max would have won the championship’.
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For a long time in 2025, it looked like Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri would definitely take the world title. Until Max Verstappen made up more than a hundred championship points on eventual champion Norris after the Dutch GP at Zandvoort. The Dutchman fell just 2 points short in Abu Dhabi. According to former Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer, Verstappen would have won the title if Sergio Pérez had still been his teammate then.
“I’ve said this before: if Red Bull had kept Sergio, Max would have won the championship,” the former team boss says in the High Performance Racing podcast. “He lost it by just two points to Lando. All they needed was a Sergio who could have squeezed in between a win for Max and a win for Lando a few times. If you had one win for Max with a second place for Sergio, for example at Suzuka, then Max would have won the championship.” Pérez was let go by Red Bull at the end of 2024 and replaced by Liam Lawson. After two Grands Prix, the New Zealander had to give up his seat to Yuki Tsunoda again.
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‘Ministry of Defence’
Szafnauer bases his statements on the 2021 season, when Pérez earned the nickname ‘Ministry of Defence’ for, among other things, his defensive work against Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi. “If you remember – and that’s what made me think of this – in his first year at Red Bull, when Max won, he was known as the Ministry of Defence,” continues the former Alpine boss. “And why was that? Because he positioned himself between Max and the others to defend Max and thus secure the victory.”
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