RANKED: Champions' team-mates - is calamity Perez the worst of the 21st century?

Sergio Perez should be celebrating his new Red Bull contract in style, but the Mexican is attracting attention for all the wrong reasons as his slump continues.

The 34-year-old has endured a terrible spell of late, including Q1 exits and DNFs in Monaco and Canada, and somehow still finishing two places behind Max Verstappen in Austria despite the Dutchman’s collision, puncture, extra pit-stop, and 10-second time penalty.

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As Red Bull’s rivals continue to threaten Verstappen, Perez’s new deal is coming under intense scrutiny. He has five wins with the team, but his recent failings in such a dominant car had us thinking… is Perez the worst team-mate to a champion in 21st-century F1?

GPFans has ranked all ten team-mates to champions since 2000 by working out their average points deficit, as a percentage due to points system changes, to their title-winning partners.

With some editorial vibes-based decisions added to the fray, it’s an imperfect system, but we’ve ranked the champions’ team-mates from the great to the ugly below.

The great: Hamilton and Rosberg

It’s unsurprising that the only pair to both win the world championship as team-mates this century are the two who rank in the ‘great’ category.

Lewis Hamilton took the title in 2014 and 2015 ahead of his German team-mate, who amassed 83% and 85% respectively of the Brit’s points.

Though Rosberg did not substantially challenge his team-mate then, he comfortably finished second in both seasons and his strong hauls of points secured the team’s first two constructors’ championships.

Rosberg sacrificed virtually everything except racing for his crowning moment in 2016, when he triumphed over Hamilton by five points. Hamilton’s 380 points were 99% of Rosberg’s total, and with his dream realised, the German promptly retired as world champion.

Despite the devastation for Hamilton, he at least knows in his heart that he is the second best ever performing team-mate to a champion (Alain Prost lost the championship by half a point to Niki Lauda in 1974, having scored 99.3% of the Austrian’s tally).

The good: Barrichello, Massa and Bottas

No, Rubens Barrichello has not snuck into the ‘good’ category as sympathy for finishing behind team-mate Michael Schumacher for five title-winning seasons in a row (more on that later), nor for retiring from nine consecutive home races.

It’s his 2009 season against Jenson Button from which he garners the most credit. Achieving a solid 81% of the Brit’s title-winning total, 38-year-old Barrichello held his own and outscored second Red Bull driver Mark Webber to ensure Brawn’s constructors’ miracle.

Felipe Massa scored 85% of Kimi Raikkonen’s points in 2007. So, why is he not ‘great’? Well, that season, McLaren pair Hamilton and Fernando Alonso both outscored the Brazilian, meaning the British team would have taken the constructors’ title had they not been disqualified due to the ‘Spygate’ scandal.

Massa also suffers from not having won a championship himself; just another painful repercussion from the 2008 season. Maybe he should add this ranking to his lawsuit against F1 and the FIA.

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Valtteri Bottas’ partnership with Hamilton was much less dramatic. Bottas started strongly, scoring 84% of Hamilton’s points total in 2017 to help fend off Ferrari, though that dropped to 61% in 2018. The Finn helped the Silver Arrows to the constructors’ title in all five seasons there, though finished runner-up only twice.

Bottas’ status is aided by outperforming Perez during the epic 2021 title fight between their team-mates. His record of making Q3 at every single weekend with the team also cannot be overlooked. His average points percentage to Hamilton in the Brit’s championship-winning seasons was a solid 72%, but his reputation will always suffer from not injecting more excitement into Hamilton’s post-2016 success.

The okay: Barrichello (again) and Webber

Always the bridesmaid… actually, Barrichello only managed to finish runner-up in 2002 and 2004, leaving Schumacher to do much of the heavy lifting to secure a quintet of constructors’ championships to pair with his Ferrari drivers’ titles.

Perhaps that was how the Scuderia liked it. They did, after all, demand Barrichello let Schumacher past for the win in Austria in 2002 despite the fact the German had already won four of the opening five races of the season.

Barrichello’s best season during Schumacher’s reign was in 2004, when he scored 77% of his team-mate’s points. At his 2001 worst, though, Barrichello scored 46% of the German’s total, the second-poorest ratio of the 21st century.

Mark Webber suffered a similar fate to Barrichello, losing out four times in a row to title-winning team-mate Sebastian Vettel from 2010-2013.

The Australian’s record against Vettel ranged from the sublime (95%, 2010) to the sad (50%, 2013), with ratios of 66% (2011) and 64% (2012) between. The team still achieved four constructors’ titles in a row, but Webber’s demise against Vettel ultimately led to his retirement from the sport.

The bad… and ugly: Fisichella, Kovalainen, Perez

Giancarlo Fisichello boasts the unwanted record of the worst season and average against a team-mate in their title-winning years, a measly 44% in 2005.

He improved to 54% a year later, but was still utterly outclassed by a supremely skillful young Spaniard. Then again, Alonso is hardly the only champion listed to be a genius behind the wheel.

In 2008, Heikki Kovalainen was nowhere near the dramatic title race his team-mate won, finishing a seventh as Ferrari won the constructors’ title. Though Hamilton has gone on to become arguably the greatest to ever drive an F1 car, 2008 was just his second season in the sport, which doesn’t boost Kovalainen’s case. The Finnish driver stumbled to 54% of Hamilton’s total, with one win to the Brit’s five.

And finally, to Perez. The Mexican is averaging 54% of Verstappen’s points, and his floundering 2024 season is bringing that down every week.

This season and last, he has managed just 50% of Verstappen’s tally, but 2021 remains his worst season to date in this metric, when he scored 48% of the Dutchman’s points. This was not exactly helpful for his team-mate chasing his maiden title, though Perez’s most memorable moment that year was holding Hamilton up in the controversial Abu Dhabi finale.

Every week he seems to be under more pressure and sinking to a new low. Still, it could be worse. In 1972, David Walker scored a grand total of zero points as team-mate Emerson Fittipaldi raced to the title.

No driver in modern-day F1 will match that ‘feat’, but if Red Bull have any early exit clauses in Perez’s contract, they must be hovering over them much earlier than expected.

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