Max Verstappen has defended his under-pressure teammate Sergio Perez, insisting the Mexican's struggles with the 2024 Red Bull car "weren't always his fault."
Speculation surrounding Perez's future with Red Bull continues to escalate as top team officials openly deliberate about the team's 2025 driver lineup. Despite his valid contract for next year, there are widespread reports of ongoing negotiations to end the deal.
In an end-of-year interview with Viaplay, reigning four-time world champion Verstappen addressed Red Bull's failure to win the constructors' championship by a 77-point margin.
"That was a total failure for us," Verstappen admitted.
While Perez has borne the brunt of the criticism, Verstappen was quick to defend his teammate. "It was difficult for Checo, but it wasn't always his fault. We simply had a very difficult car at times."
Team advisor Dr Helmut Marko hinted that a decision on Perez's future is imminent. Writing in his Speed Week column, Marko stated: "We will be announcing news in the next few days about what the driver pairing will look like next year.
"There is a lot of speculation, including about transfer fees that are being mentioned that are complete nonsense," Marko added.
Meanwhile, Yuki Tsunoda, who alongside Liam Lawson is considered a potential candidate for the senior Red Bull seat, described the likelihood of a promotion as "50-50."
Verstappen, however, continued to sympathise with Perez's difficulties, attributing much of the blame to the Red Bull car's characteristics.
"I don't want to put him down, because he's my teammate and I get along very well with him. But I can also clearly say that not everything was his fault about how things went wrong.
"The biggest problem we had is that the car sometimes didn't work," Verstappen explained. "I know what Checo's driving style is, and the car that we had at one point was just very difficult to drive, also for me. That doesn't help, of course."
The Dutchman went on to say the team's slow response to addressing those car issues made life more difficult for Perez.
"We should have started working on that sooner, because that would have helped him a lot too.
"At the start of the season he was often second or third. That was fine, but at a certain point it just became very difficult," Verstappen continued. "Your confidence can then take a hit. Some people are a bit more sensitive to that than others.
"But I think that as a team we didn't always do that well."
