Sergio Perez is going about his Max Verstappen title challenge in the wrong way, in the view of Alain Prost.
Before the start of the season, Perez vowed to give his team-mate a proper fight for the title. And, in the early rounds, he lived up to that pledge.
After the first four races of the year, the Red Bull racers had two wins apiece and only six points separated them. Even after Verstappen won the fifth, the gap stood only at 14 points.
But Perez's hopes have taken a blow in the last few weeks. A qualifying crash in Monaco led to him leaving the principality pointless, while he could manage only fourth place in Spain from 11th on the grid.
As a result, he's been left with a mountain to climb. Perez remains second in the standings, but is now 53 points adrift of Verstappen who is one a three-race winning streak and has been making few, if any, mistakes.
Like most others, four-time world champion Prost doubts his chances of overcoming the Dutchman. And if he has any chance of doing so, the Frenchman thinks Perez has to cut back on the public declarations that he can beat his team-mate.
"A driver's game is always to try and tip the balance in his favour, whether it's the set-up of the car or the contribution of the team," he wrote in his column for French newspaper L'Equipe. "And that's where Perez is wrong.
"He needs to make Max Verstappen doubt him and change Red Bull's mind about him. As we know, Perez is tackling an almost impossible mission. And in order to achieve it, he must above all not shout so loudly about his desire to beat Max."
The 33-year-old is not the only member of the Perez family who has been making such claims in public. His father Antonio has also been hyping up his son – leaving Prost unimpressed.
He added: "His entourage isn't helping him either. When I read a month ago that his father told journalists that his fight with Max was similar to the one I had with Ayrton [Senna]... it's pointless and counterproductive."
