From his perspective, judging Perez by rookie standards, the Mexican's overall performance is without question qualified, even excellent.
It's just that Perez gets very little attention inside the paddock.
There are two reasons for this, and the first is that his driving style is destined not to be very box-office.
The focus of attention in the paddock is usually on outright speed, while long-run consistency is relatively less valued.
It's like Leclerc from the later Ferrari Team era—his "Brother Extreme" nickname is world-famous, many people put him in the same tier as Verstappen, and say the difference between them is just a good car.
But what a lot of people don't know is that over the first five years of their careers, Leclerc's record was actually worse than Masa's…
