It’ll be amusing if Lawson does better in the Racing Bulls car than he did in the RB. Or if he does better in the Racing Bulls car than Tsunoda does in the Red Bull.
I don’t think it’s impossible that Perez was not slipping - the problem is instead that Red Bull actually has bad (or idiosyncratic) cars, and Verstappen is just so good he can still win in them.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with the arguments in the post I guess, but I thought I’d point out for anyone as confused as me: the ‘latest’ book OP is talking about, “Judgement at Proteus’, is thirteen years old, not some new instalment.