The dangers of Red Bull re-signing Perez

Somehow, the news that Red Bull has re-signed Sergio Perez for another two seasons, taking his tenure at the team to six years, is not a surprise. But perhaps it should be, given the Mexican’s performances alongside Max Verstappen.

A case could be made for it being the wrong move for Red Bull and, indeed, Formula 1, so let’s make it.

Any neutral fan wants the top seats to be taken by the best drivers. It stands to reason you’d want to have as much competition at the front as possible. And from a team’s point of view, you normally want to score as heavily with both cars as possible. Constructors’ championship points mean, quite literally, prizes.

Red Bull has had a dominant enough car that it hasn’t had to worry about this since the ground effect rules arrived in 2022. Famously, Verstappen would have won the constructors’ crown last year on his own.

But recent evidence suggests the field is catching up – Ferrari is just 24 points behind in the constructors’ standings – and Red Bull might not have that luxury in future. Given the high quality of everything else Red Bull does, it seems a little strange to have that chink in its armour.

For those feeling we’re being harsh on Perez, a popular figure who earned a chance in a frontrunning team after years of performing strongly in the midfield, let’s look at some of the facts.

Firstly, on the supertimes matrix, Perez is the worst-performing driver compared to his team-mate in 2024 apart from Logan Sargeant at Williams.

Supertimes are based on the fastest single lap by each driver at each race weekend, expressed as a percentage of the fastest single lap overall (100.000%) and averaged over the season. In other words, it’s a measure of raw pace:

Fastest-slowest supertimes gap

Some will argue that Verstappen is a tough benchmark and, seeing as the Dutchman is already becoming one of F1’s greats, that’s true. But this overlooks two…