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The Red Bull was also less dominant in the Gasly/Albon era. Being half a second slower than Max could put them several places behind, whereas Perez could still end 2nd or 3rd on the grid.

It's a strange situation. Both Albon and Gasly have rebuilt their careers and look like decent drivers. Perez always looked good before Red Bull and finished ahead of a lot of his team mates. None of them are bad drivers. So is Max just that much better? He's an exceptional talent for sure. But why was Perez so much closer to him in the first few races? Does the car gradually get developed around Max? I don't know the answer, but that second seat seems cursed.

Upon further review, one driver has always lost out badly. Going all the way back through to 2005, the only seasons where both drivers were kind of even were

2007, Webber and Coulthard, evenly matched on results but the car was unreliable and rarely got points when it was points down to 8th.
2015, Kyvat and Ricciardo, evenly matched but once again unreliable car
2016, Ricciardo and Verstappen evenly matched, Ricciardo outscores but had a four race headstart on MV

Every other year, I've reviewed, one driver had a clear advantage over the other. 2018 could also go on this list, Verstappen comfortably outscored DR but DR had 5 more retirements than him.

I know he's better than Perez, but would it be an oversimplification to assume the car was developed and tailored for Max's driving preferences, thus exaggerating the gap between them?

Every driver wants different things from the car, Red Bull makes sure he gets the car tailored to exactly what he needs and the 2nd car can go fiddle

TBF Johnny Herbert, Eddie Irvine, Giancarlo Fishichella, Jarno Trulli, Mark Webber and god knows who else have said exactly the same through the years...making two cars equally compettitive for both of their drivers doesn't seem to be the F1 way, throwing all resources at one car and hoping the inherint performance will drag the 2nd car into the constructors championship seems to be the main focus, with only Mclaren and Mercedes allowing their team-mates to compete in recent memory. (And Mclaren had Coulthard that was just about fast enough to be a problem for Hakkinen and the team and putting himself into a position to take out his team mate on occasion.... )

*Edit* And maybe Brawn? But Rubens got a bit pissed off with them for focusing on Button at one point, so I'm not so sure...

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All this hype around McLaren's "rocketship"... expect them to come back down to Earth in Hungary and for that matter any remaining tracks that are predominantly slow/medium speed corners. Pretty sure their upgrade is highly track specific. They were getting mugged by other cars through the slower bits in Silverstone.

yeah just like Benetton in 1994. The other cars was just a tub with spare parts and all the development was meant for Schumacher

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