Sergio Perez will officially leave Red Bull after four seasons with the team as Total-Motorsport.com understands they will choose to promote Liam Lawson to partner Max Verstappen from 2025, but why have they got the decision to sack the Mexican wrong now?
At a glance, it seems like a no brainer to move the 34-year-old after he finished with just 152 points compared to his colleague’s championship-winning haul of 437 and was the only driver from the lead four teams to fail to take a victory in Grand Prixs or Sprint Races.
A distance 71 points behind the struggling Lewis Hamilton, who spent the majority of the season in an underwhelming Mercedes car, as well as a total of just 15 Q3 appearances, fewer than Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin, also doesn’t paint a good picture.
On top of that, he also was beaten by Verstappen 23-1 in qualifying and the only time he finished ahead of him on the track was when the Dutchman’s brakes failed at the Australian GP as he retired from the race.
His lack of performance compared to his Red Bull teammate can be summed up at the Austrian GP in June. After crashing with Lando Norris and receiving a puncture and a 10-second time penalty, Perez still finished 17.4 seconds behind Verstappen.
Why it’s not all Perez’s fault?
But it wasn’t all his fault. It was revealed that the six-time Grand Prix winner was aware of problems with the Red Bull car since the early stages of 2023, only for hiss team to ignore him under the impression he was simply struggling.
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Then when those problems hit his four-time world champion teammate from around 2024 Monaco GP, but definitely by the Hungarian GP at the Hungaroring, it was already too late for them to turn their form around.
Verstappen did manage to claim two more wins after Hungary but to see him finishing 20 seconds off the winning driver, particularly after the summer break, was not unusual as both drivers battled an unpredictable, inconsistent ad difficult-to-set-up car.
So if a generation-defining talent such as the Flying Dutchman is struggling to get a grip on the car and is struggling for pace and regularly finishing fourth, fifth or sixth, it’s unfair to expect Perez to also be doing more.
Why Red Bull are wrong to sack Perez now?
But Perez was also crashing his car too and running up the crash damage budget, ultimately taking funding away from the development budget as Red Bull’s engineers and mechanics patched up his RB20 all too often.
So his struggles with speed alone could have bought him the extra two seasons outlined in his contract, but the financial hit in the cost-cap era is simply too much for a team trying to remain at the very top of the sport.
As a result, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko are right to let him leave Red Bull. But they were wrong with how they’ve done it through the timing.
Perez’s career was already on the ropes well before the summer break, with it widely being reported that Daniel Ricciardo was going to be the one replacing him following the 2024 Belgian GP, which then shifted to Yuki Tsunoda following the axing of the Australian anyway.
And in that time, the Mexican’s performances haven’t changed and have actually got worse as he continuously suffered Q1 exits. Surely Red Bull knew their mind was made up prior to the 2024 Abu Dhabi GP based on the previous pressure they put on him?
But their indecision, or lack of transparency, means that now Perez does not have the chance to secure himself a spot on the grid for the upcoming F1 2025 season after the last spot outside of Horner’s pool was snapped up by Gabriel Bortoleto at Sauber.
Had they told Perez of his inevitable future for good, even behind closed doors, he could have got busy negotiating with the likes of Williams, Sauber (who become Audi in 2026), Haas and even Alpine.
It was perhaps the least they could have done for someone who was so influential in the 2021 title fight, when Red Bull claimed their first title since 2013. The decision to fire was right, but the timing is all wrong.
