It is well known that Helmut Marko, in his role as an advisor to the Red Bull racing team that currently dominates Formula 1, has a loose tongue when making comments about his own drivers or pilots from other teams. But Marko made a huge mistake with his analysis of Sergio Pérez.
Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko and Sergio Pérez, wingman of Dominator Max Verstappen at the dominant Austrian Formula 1 racing team, will probably no longer be close friends in this life. Marko has repeatedly publicly criticized the Mexican in the past. This was also the case around the last F1 weekend in Italy, where Pérez started the race in fifth place and ended up second behind Verstappen.
“The Italian GP was certainly one of Checo Pérez’s best weekends,” Marko told “Servus TV” and clearly added: “We know about his problems in qualifying.”
But why does Pérez actually have such a difficult time chasing a fast lap compared to his teammate Verstappen? Marko’s answer: “He’s South American, he has fluctuations in form, he can’t concentrate as well as Verstappen or Sebastian Vettel.” However, no one at the Austrian TV station asked how the 80-year-old from Graz came to such an assumption.
Regardless of Marko’s lack of knowledge of geography – Pérez’s native Mexico is in Central and not South America – the Austrian’s comments made waves on social networks. Marko was a racist, some wrote, others noted that the “old, arrogant man” could no longer be changed.
Formula 1: Helmut Marko defends himself
Either way: Marko responded to the allegations some time later, but he didn’t manage to completely dispel them.
“It wasn’t meant that way. I meant that a Mexican has a different mentality than a German or a Dutchman,” the 80-year-old defended himself to the portal “oe24.at”, not without adding that that was also the case an agenda could act against him. “But who knows, maybe it’s controlled,” said Marko.