Sergio Perez has had a personal apology from Red Bull’s Helmut Marko after comments linking his performance to his culture.
The motorsport advisor caused a backlash following the Italian GP after suggesting Perez’s inconsistent form in 2023 was due to a “South American” mentality in an interview with Red Bull-owned Servus TV.
Marko later issued a statement apologising for his “offensive remark”, which was also geographically inaccurate, adding: “I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not believe that we can generalise about the people from any country, any race, any ethnicity.
“I was trying to make a point that Checo has fluctuated in his performance this year, but it was wrong to attribute this to his cultural heritage.”
And now, ahead of this weekend’s Singapore GP, Perez confirmed he met personally with the Austrian to discuss the matter.
“I had a private conversation with him. He did apologise and that, to me, was the main thing,” he said.
“Basically, we move on, I have a personal relationship with him. and I think you can always have those feelings when you have that sort of talk – knowing the person helps a lot because I know he doesn’t mean it that way.
“I took his apology because I know from the personal relationships that we’ve had, that he doesn’t mean it that way.”
For that reason, Perez explained that he took no offence to what the 80-year-old Marko said.
“Not at all,” he stated. “If I’m totally honest. He doesn’t mean it that way, and I didn’t get offended at all, personally.
“Let’s say, if those comments were from a different perspective or so on, I would have taken them differently. But, for me, it’s just how things are, and I didn’t take them personally.
“When you read them, in isolation, they can be very disrespectful. But, like I say, knowing Helmut and having that personal relationship, helped me to understand him. He gave me a personal apology.”
Talking to Sky Sports, Lewis Hamilton strongly condemned Marko’s comment.
“I mean, it’s totally unacceptable what he said,” the seven-time world champion declared.
“Whilst we say there’s no room for any type of discrimination within this sport, which there should be no room for, to have leaders, people in his position, making comments like this, is not good for us moving forward.
“So I think it just highlights for us the work that still needs to be done. There are a lot of people in the background that really are trying to combat these sorts of things, but it’s hard to manoeuvre when you have people that are at the top, if there are people in the top that have those sort of mindsets that just stop us from progressing.
“Yeah, I’m not surprised to be honest.”