What’s at stake for Red Bull as Perez decision looms

After another hot and cold weekend at Spa’s Belgian Grand Prix, a decision on Sergio Perez‘s Red Bull fate is imminent.

Perez’s future hangs the balance after an appalling run of performances and results alongside team-mate Max Verstappen over the past three months, which has seen Red Bull come under serious threat in the constructors’ championship – the gap with McLaren is down to 42 points.

Perez was set for two key races in Hungary and Belgium to show signs of his old self, but another qualifying crash in Budapest undid what looked like a more promising weekend and relegated him to fighting in another comeback race from 16th to seventh.

In a wet qualifying at Spa, Perez did well to qualify third, which became second on the grid after a grid penalty for Verstappen. But Perez was one of the drivers passed by the Dutchman on his way to take fifth, with the Mexican relegated to a disappointing eighth at the finish.

“Starting on the front row, we felt that third and fifth would be achievable,” said team boss Christian Horner. “We achieved the fifth but we didn’t achieve the third. So we obviously need to understand where his loss of pace was.

“Based on his starting position, we didn’t envisage finishing eighth from second on the grid.”

Why Red Bull wants to act quickly

On Monday, team boss Horner and advisor Helmut Marko are holding crunch talks over whether Perez will have to be replaced by one of Red Bull’s other contracted drivers for the remainder of 2024, or whether the Mexican will get 10 more races to save his career.

“For us, the situation is such that we will also go through the overall situation for 2025,” Marko told Sky Germany about the meeting. “We have a number of drivers, but of course every result is [important] for Sergio, and eighth place from second on the grid is certainly not what we expected.”

Red Bull must act quickly, because next week Formula 1 enters its mandatory summer shutdown for 14 days. That means that if Horner and Marko do decide time is up for Perez, there isn’t much time to get someone else through the door, with just the one week before Zandvoort’s Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August to get a replacement settled in and ready to perform at the sharp end of the grid.

While Perez’s fate is expected to be clear soon, the identity of his replacement might take a few more days to…