What’s happened to Sergio Pérez? His early season form was the best I’ve seen from him, then it just evaporated. It’s what we saw with Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes: when you are up against someone with the wow factor it’s simply hard to compete every weekend. On raw speed Sergio can be as quick as Max Verstappen, but Sergio just doesn’t have that wow factor. He can do well, but that’s it.

Believe me, I know the feeling. You try to do the best you possibly can and you think you are moving forward, then you come in, look at the screen and go ‘ugh, God!’ That’s how it was for me with Michael Schumacher at Benetton. It’s demoralising. Those special drivers keep punching you in the arm. A punch might ricochet off every now and then, and you think you are moving forward – but then they go bang again!

Is it fair to say Sergio’s not good enough? No, because he’s proven he can win and get pole positions. But sadly he will never prove that he’s world championship-winning material. He’s one of many. David Coulthard is very open about that aspect – he says he wasn’t complete enough, and I was the same. The special ones have this ability that even when things aren’t going right they can still turn it around.

“Both Lando and Charles would be high on Red Bull’s list”

So should Red Bull stick or twist on Pérez for 2024? Well, he’s still adding a lot of points for the constructors’, even if it’s not always a 1-2 result every time despite the team’s domination. But if you decide he’s not doing the job, what do you change to? What are you trying to add to the team? If you want Senna vs Prost or Hamilton vs Rosberg, you are always in that fragile situation of disrupting that harmony it has with Verstappen. I don’t think Red Bull has any juniors with the wow factor, at least no one who is yet ready to step up. So on that basis I don’t see why you’d want to change.

Then again… it’s harsh to say it because I think Sergio is still doing a good job at Red Bull – but can someone come in and do a better one, and is that needed for the long-term? There are a couple of candidates, if that was the thinking.

Let’s consider Charles Leclerc. What I see is Ferrari still has that problem of a connection from Charles in the car to his engineer to the strategists. It’s still fragmented. That relationship requires a massive amount of trust, what Ferrari had in the Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher era. Charles is frustrated as hell, and it’s been going on for 18 months, a fundamental issue Ferrari has been unable to get on top of. For Charles to get his mojo back Fred Vasseur must sort it out and get the right people in. Not an easy thing to do.

So where is his head? If he’s thinking he’s had enough, he needs to move on, where can he go? The only logical opening would be Red Bull – because it ain’t gonna change at Mercedes nor at Aston Martin, at least for next year – and Hamilton and Alonso could go on beyond that, too.

“Those really special drivers keep punching you in the arm, and it’s demoralising for their team-mates”

Then there’s Lando Norris. I hope he’s got a performance clause in his long-term McLaren contract. But it’s the same situation that Charles faces: where does he go other than Red Bull? If the team did decide to bring someone new in, you would think both Lando and Charles would be high on the list. For Lando, it looks like a move might need to happen before everyone starts talking about someone else. You don’t get forgotten necessarily, but you might fall off the list.

There’s also the question of how much power Max has at Red Bull to have a veto on who his team-mate might be. Would he do that even if he could? Actually, I’m not sure he would. Like Michael Schumacher, he has that total belief that he can beat anybody and I honestly don’t feel he’d consider Lando a threat. He’d reckon he could punch his arm, the same way he has with everyone else! That’s his mentality. I could be wrong but I don’t think he’ll worry about anyone coming in and beating him to the next title. He’ll just think he can crush them and make them feel small. He’s so bloody good.

On that point, we still haven’t seen the best from Max. He’s developed and matured massively as a complete driver, but overall he’s still getting better. And he’s only 25, equalling Senna’s win record already. That’s the scary thing for everybody else.