OPINION: As Sergio Perez heads to the exit at Red Bull – and possibly out of Formula 1 altogether – it’s because of his dire 2024 campaign. Here are the 10 key moments that finally cost him a drive he nearly lost back in the summer
Sergio Perez’s Red Bull career haul now ends at five wins, three poles and 932 points. That he only added to the last of those three categories in the 2024 Formula 1 season is one of three key reasons why he’s finally been cast off as Max Verstappen’s team-mate.
The other two are firstly how it’s thanks to Perez bringing in just 35% of the world champion’s points total that Red Bull lost the 2024 constructors’ crown. And that things just didn’t have any hope of recovering.
Because Red Bull tried both carrot and stick – each supplied separately by the public support of team boss Christian Horner and the equally open slamming of company motorsport advisor Helmut Marko.
By his home race in Mexico, it’d become obvious from the private messages of Red Bull insiders that the heap of goodwill Perez had built in the way he’d defended on Verstappen’s behalf against Lewis Hamilton late in the 2021 campaign had finally been exhausted.
He’d survived the summer decision on keeping him and Daniel Ricciardo in their respective places. Now both and are gone. And, for Perez, there’s a season-long trail of moments where he should’ve done better and that explain why he’s now been ditched.
1 Not winning when Verstappen exited in Australia
Perez failed to pick up the victory in Australia after Verstappen suffered a reliability problem
Although Ferrari looked like the team to beat over a race stint in Melbourne, Red Bull started on pole and looked threatening with Verstappen – three races into the part of the season where the team remained as dominant as in 2023.
But the Dutchman’s brake fire there meant he retired early on, with Carlos Sainz moving serenely on to win, with the only interest in the rest of the podium places coming from the battle between his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc and the McLaren drivers.
Perez, with an RB20 that should’ve been a victory contender, was absent. This was after he’d impeded Nico Hulkenberg early in a qualifying that should’ve netted third on the grid.
He railed and was hampered by getting a visor tearoff stuck in his underfloor on his way to fifth. But this result highlighted how Perez should always be there to pick up the pieces when Verstappen is struck by misfortune for Red Bull. And had he started higher he might’ve avoided his race downforce loss.
2 Losing out to Norris in China
Melbourne might’ve been a blip, given how Perez had backed Verstappen up in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Japan. But on F1’s return to China, he let another such result slip away as Verstappen cruised to another win.
Having scrapped with Sainz and Fernando Alonso in the sprint race Verstappen won, Perez was a hefty 0.3s off his team-mate in qualifying. Then, at the start of the Chinese GP, he let the Aston Martin get all the way around his outside and a front row start was blown.
Pushing too hard early in each of his subsequent stints undid him against Lando Norris, who’d started behind, even around the varying fortunes of the virtual and real safety cars. Given the McLaren was yet to get its season-transforming update in Miami, this was a poor result for an RB20 driver.
When the MCL38 was massively upgraded in Miami, Perez’s weekend started badly in that he spent the sprint battling Ricciardo’s RB before he was behind both Ferraris in GP qualifying.
He then nearly wiped Verstappen out at the start of the race that kickstarted Norris’s season.
3 That Monaco crash starts totting up a hefty 2024 crash damage bill
Having scored a famous win in Monaco in 2022 – which let’s not forget enraged Verstappen given how his now former team-mate’s Q3 crash stopped him doing better than third – crashes blighted Perez’s next two visits to the principality.
In 2023, he crashed out in Q1. Then, this year, he was out in another shunt on the opening lap – having failed to progress from that qualifying opening segment on pace. The red-flag-causing shunt with the Haas drivers wasn’t completely his fault, but he had space to move into with Kevin Magnussen looming on the meandering rise to Massenet.
“A complete disaster,” he’d said after qualifying. But it summed up his weekend overall too.
4 Post-Monaco contract extension doesn’t help Perez’s form
A new contract put a spring in Perez’s step in Canada, but results ultimately didn’t follow
Red Bull’s most obvious attempt to lift Perez from a spiral he’d really been on since 2022 came when it announced he’d been granted a two-year contract extension on 4 June.
The thinking was that, supposedly secure in his position, his form would improve.
“The past few races have been tough, there is convergence on the grid, but we are confident in Checo and look forward to his return to proven form and performance, that we so often see,” Horner said before next time out in Canada, things were just as bad.
Perez again failed to make it out of Q1 – blaming a car issue Red Bull wouldn’t expand upon.
He then crashed out solo in the race – choosing to drive back to the pits with his heavily damaged car to avoid the risk of a safety car appearance impacting Verstappen’s chances up front. In doing so he earned another grid penalty for Spain, plus a 1/10 in Motorsport.com’s driver ratings for the second weekend in a row.
After a so-so Spain – taking eighth from starting 11th when Verstappen won brilliantly in holding off Norris – Perez was awful again in Austria. On Red Bull’s home turf, he lost out to Nico Hulkenberg in the GP – being undercut twice with poor pace compared to the Haas driver, who he couldn’t keep behind in a fierce final lap scrap.
5 Silverstone shambles
A dreadful British GP weekend saw rumours of a summer split with Red Bull grow
Next time out at Silverstone, both Red Bull cars had moments at Copse in the drying Q1. But where Verstappen held his wobble and only damaged his floor in the runoff, Perez span off on an outlap, got beached in the gravel and would start Red Bull’s other home race from the pitlane.
In the British GP, he took intermediates before the rain really fell hard and, needing an extra stop, ended up a shocking two laps down in 17th, while Verstappen rescued second.
“I have a contract with the team and I will turn things around,” he vowed.
6 More of the same in and after Hungary
Things did not improve for Perez in Hungary ahead of the summer break
It was a similar story for Perez in Hungary, where Red Bull unleashed the RB20’s first major upgrade – but only on Verstappen’s car.
He qualified 16th with another Q1 crash and raced to seventh – all under the pressure of Red Bull’s management considering activating a clause in his contract that put him in peril if he was 100 points behind Verstappen as the summer break kicked off.
At the time he was 141 behind, which would be a whopping 285 by the end of the season. These behind-the-scenes discussions were tied together with Red Bull’s simultaneous decision over whether to promote Ricciardo back to its main team or ditch him for Liam Lawson, then still waiting in the wings.
But it was ultimately decided to keep the status quo for the initial post-summer races, as it was felt at the time Ricciardo had at least done enough for things to stay put. But Ricciardo’s stay of RB ex
7 Spa second goes begging
Starting from second, Perez was out of contention after just a single corner
Before Red Bull made its summer calls on its F1 driver stable, Perez gave it yet more disappointment at Spa on the eve of the summer break.
The fast, undulating track with its many high-speed corners is the perfect layout for its car package, with Verstappen duly blasting to top qualifying here for the fourth year in succession. But, in another very familiar way, he would drop back on the grid for taking replacement engine parts.
Perez was therefore left to take what should’ve been a nailed-on Red Bull win from second on the grid. But he was out of contention by the first corner, as Hamilton piled by to chase and overhaul inheriting polesitter Leclerc, with the Mercedes driver going on to win (eventually).
Perez carried on sliding backwards and finally came home seventh – three places adrift of Verstappen, who’d started nine places behind.
8 Baku boom ends in bust
Baku was the one that got away, with a late crash with Sainz resulting in an unfortunate DNF
As is so often the case due to the neutral steering balance he likes from the set-ups required to cope with so many 90-degrees, Perez shone on the streets of Baku. In 2024, this was the one weekend where Verstappen was nowhere, as the nadir of the RB20’s handling challenge bit hardest and his set-up gamble backfired.
Perez therefore led the line for Red Bull, although still only qualifying fourth and 0.4s off Leclerc’s pole. Yet in the race, he worked his way into becoming a victory threat – and might’ve gotten ahead of eventual winner Oscar Piastri but for Norris’s efforts to delay the leading RB20 during the race’s pitstop phase while the second McLaren ran the contra strategy.
Leading Piastri after this stage might’ve meant Perez overhauling Leclerc and claiming what would’ve been a first win in 17 months and following on from F1’s previous visit to Azerbaijan back in early 2023 (now set to be his final F1 triumph in a career stretching back to 2011).
But he remained trapped behind the leaders. Then, when Leclerc’s tyres cried enough and the fight for second opened up with Piastri clear ahead, Perez failed to move into the acres of space to his left in a sudden battle with Sainz in the other Ferrari.
Contact was made – this time with Perez more to blame. Another costly repair followed for Red Bull and a much-needed victory for the embattled team was wasted.
9 Mexico errors make things worse
Starting out of position, Perez soon ended up battling Lawson in what became a drawn out rivalry
Verstappen had finally got his team back to winning ways in the Austin sprint – after Perez had been unable to replicate his decent Baku form on another street setting in Singapore. In the main race in Texas, he scrapped with midfielders and badly lost time to the frontrunners, before heading to his home race in Mexico.
The pressure is always on Perez there, but, with the field so close these days he was at risk of something embarrassing: the Q1 exit that occurred. He blamed this on how he couldn’t “brake or stop the car and as soon as I attack the braking, I start sliding and locking up”.
In the race, he was penalised for lining up too far forwards in his grid box and had a bruising encounter with Lawson that left him with damage. Getting the middle finger from the New Zealander on his way to finishing lapped and last of the finishers was the final indignity.
10 Qatar caps Perez’s Red Bull career
Perez’s Qatar weekend was embarrassing for all concerned
By this stage, Red Bull sources were sounding ever more exasperated. The team had tried to help Perez with the longstanding braking problem, but, seemingly, to no avail.
In Qatar, he was out in SQ1 and then bafflingly didn’t react to the lights changing from his latest pitlane start for being fitted with a different suspension specification as Red Bull chased a desperate solution to its handling ills even here, five races on from its design breakthrough with its Austin floor and sidepod developments.
This gaffe let Williams’s Franco Colapinto nip ahead and Perez was pitted during the sprint to do more set-up experiments on Verstappen’s behalf, which were later deemed a failure. He at least made Q3 in GP qualifying, which his team-mate topped before his George Russell row broke out.
In the Qatar race, Perez was had looked set to benefit when the safety car was called for the debris and punctures Hamilton and Sainz had suffered as he’d been running between them.
But he botched this chance by spinning off solo just as the neutralisation was about to end.
He burned his clutch out trying to get going again, which was to reoccur after he’d been punted around by Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas at the season finale the following week in Abu Dhabi.
An underwhelming end, then, for such a stint in F1’s best team of the current era.
