Max Verstappen hopes Sergio Perez’s arrival at Red Bull will help the team make life “a bit mꦯore difficult” for Mercedes during the 2021 Formula 1 season. 

The Mexican has replaced Alex Albon in Red Bull’s line-up alongside Verstappen fo♏r 2021 after Albon failed to live up to expectations in his first full-season with the Milton Keynes squad.

And Verstappen beౠlieves Perez, who claimed his maiden F1 win at last year’s Sakhir Grand Prix, will strengthen Red Bull’s bid to mount a sustained title challenge to Mercedes this season. 

“With Checo I always got on very well anyway so it’s a veryꦍ relaxed and goo relation💃ship already,” he explained. 

“For me, it honestly doesn’t really change that much. For the team, on the other hand, I think we always want to score with two cars as high as ♋possible. So let’s see if that’s going better this year.

“That’s of course the goal, that’s what we all want, to try and make it a bit more difficul⛎t for, probably, Mercedes. I mean, they must be the favourites still. So let’s see how everything g꧅oes.”

Perez has driven with a Mercedes-powered car throughout the V6 turbo-charged hybrid era so far, but he will get his first experience of Honda’s power unit at 🎉Red Bull this season. 

Verstappen reckons Perez’s vast knowledge of the Mercedes power unit will also benefit Red Bull by bringing new id♏eas to the team. 

“His information from the🎃 years he had done at another team, different power units, stuff like that, he can transfer to the team his findings and the differences,” he said. 

“So I hope, of course, it can help the team or at least givꦅes them kind of different ideas about a few things.”

Verstappen and Perez both got the chance to sample Red Bull’s updated RB16B for the🅷 first time during a shakedown run at Silverstone earlier this week, but the Dutchman says ♛it is hard to judge how much progress the team has made over the winter. 

“The thing is we drive on demo tyres so it will never feel🦂 like how it’s going to feel on real tyres,” he added. 

“I never really base a lot of my findings on this. It’s more just wanting to get the car out, run a few laps, and it all felt norm𝓰al to me.

“We just have to wait and 💫see what’s happenౠing in Bahrain once we have proper tyres on the car.

"I j🦂ust wanted to get the car out and run, do our 100km, then everyone has their data, I got back into 𒉰a Formula 1 car.

"Then we move to Bahrain where🎃 the real work of course to try and find the optimum set-up on the car is happening with proper tyres, becau🅷se these demo tyres, you can't really read anything."