Why is Verstappen prioritized to change tires before teammate Perez?

When completing the transition from the intermediate tire to the soft tire in round 13, Perez suddenly found him lagging behind teammate Verstappen. The Mexican racer asked the Red Bull instructors over the radio in a bewildered voice: "Hey, did Max jump over me?". Before that, thanks to the initiative to switch to an intermediate tire at the end of the first round, Perez went straight to the top even though he only started 7th.

Meanwhile, Verstappen and many other drivers hesitated, so it was not until the end of round 2 to change tires. Taking advantage of the time the first group cars lost a lot of time on the slippery road with dry tires, Perez took the lead in the race and widened the distance with Verstappen to nearly 15 seconds.

After switching to the intermediate tire, Verstappen quickly accelerated to close the gap with Perez. The Dutch driver quickly passed Pierre Gasly (Alpine) and Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo) and was only 5 seconds away from Perez when he reached lap 10. At this point, the road was dry, the racers began to switch back to using tires. soft.

According to the unwritten practice in F1 racing teams, if there are no unexpected developments or completely different tactics, in the same team, the car running first will have priority to change the tires first. Therefore, Perez could not help but be surprised to know that his teammate Verstappen was arranged by Red Bull to replace the front tire in round 13.

After the race, although he did not show any anger, the Mexican driver still wondered about the reason for the decision to favor his teammates. "Well, I think in those situations the instructors have more accurate data than we do. We'll look into this in the meeting. I'm sure there's a reason behind it."

Perez also explained the lack of speed compared to his teammates during the time when both used intermediate tires. "At that time, the racing team told me that it was going to rain, so not to accelerate too much." From lap 5 to lap 10, Verstappen narrowed the gap to 10 seconds, in particular, the Mexican driver's lap 7 was 4 seconds slower than Verstappen. But at the same time, Verstappen still ignored the instructions to constantly speed up to close the gap with his teammates.

When asked about this after the race, Red Bull team leader Christian Horner called Verstappen's front tire change the simple choice. "The way Max crossed the convoy was very impressive. Perez aimed to increase the distance with the cars behind, but Max's speed was so impressive that at one point the gap was reduced to 7 seconds in only three rounds. Everything happened so fast, "Horner said.

Then, Red Bull was awkward when Alonso and Gasly, who ran behind Max, soon decided to switch back to soft tires. "Watching the speed of the Albon car, then running on soft tires, you can clearly see that the soft tires are now completely superior to the intermediate tires. If you call Perez to change the front tire, Max will definitely be overtaken by Alonso and Gasly. So, even though Perez would be overtaken by his teammates, we still had to call Max to change the tires first to make sure Red Bull would take the top two spots, instead of having a car in danger of falling to 4th. is the most suitable option," Horner explained further.

However, Red Bull's explanation is considered inadequate by experts. In a similar situation, if Verstappen leads, Perez runs second, it is unlikely that the Mexican driver will be called to change the front tire. The threat from Alonso is real, but in reality, Verstappen has 60 rounds to counter-attack to find his position if he is overcome. The Dutch driver was called to change the front tire mainly because he is the number 1 driver, given priority over Perez.