The RB19 set-up differences between Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen were greater in 2021 than in this season, according to a senior Red Bull engineer. While Verstappen has won 12 of the 14 races, including the last 10 straight, team-mate Perez has had an up and down season, including struggling with the car during the first-half of the summer. He has recovered to take three podiums in the last four races heading into the Singapore Grand Prix, a track the six-time Grand Prix winner claimed victory at in 2022. Verstappen is known as a driver who likes to have his car 'on the nose' with a sharp, responsive turn in which can create rear instability. The team has rubbished suggestions that the car is designed around Verstappen's style, with Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan believing the differences in set-up on race weekends was bigger during Perez's first season in 2021.
Minor differences
"Drivers in my experience always want subtle changes or subtle differences across the garage and that's nothing unusual," Monaghan told media including RacingNews365 when asked if the two drivers required big differences in car set-up. "[Sergio] is quite close to Max with this car in terms of his set-up preferences and his choices. It makes it a little bit easier going forward with this one. "His approach to it is very similar to Max, the differences are so small and with this car I'd say it's perhaps less than 2021 car. "So no, in answer to your question, is it broadly different? No, they're very close." Monaghan also discussed Red Bull's winning streak, which now stands at 15 races as it threatens to sweep the season, but he felt was to follow the old mantra of 'one race at a time.' "Because we're in a competitive environment and you're dealing with short-term problems of the P1 session, what do we do for P2, P3," he said. "How are we going to approach qualifying? What's the weather like? "It would be wrong of us to rest on what we've achieved so far. We want to keep going. And the only way to do that is to treat each race as an individual competition and we've got to push ourselves to get the most out of ourselves the car, the drivers, if we're going to stay ahead."
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