As much as Red Bull would insist that their driver line-up is the most secure on the current grid – with world champion Max Verstappen under contract until the end of the 2028 season and Sergio Perez having been given a new deal which includes at least an option for him to be retained for 2026 – the reality is anything but.
Aside from Perez firing the rumour mill into overdrive with repeated disappointing performances virtually every grand prix weekend, even Verstappen has not been immune from speculation over his future.
The internal political struggles that engulfed the team at the start of the season have clearly not been welcomed by their world champion driver, while Toto Wolff appears not to have given up on trying to convince him to jump ship to Mercedes.
But it’s clearly Perez, 146 points behind his team mate at the summer break, whose seat is hottest. Despite only putting pen to paper with him a matter of months ago, rumours were rampant after a sequence of bad weekends leading into the summer break that Red Bull might cut their losses and replace him with either Daniel Ricciardo or Yuki Tsunoda.
That was until yesterday, when team principal Christian Horner sought to cease all speculation by confirming that Perez would remain in his seat for the upcoming Dutch Grand Prix and beyond.
That came as a surprise to many not due to Perez’s performance, but because Red Bull have not hesitated to cut those who didn’t measure up in the past, as these six cases show.
2005-6 – Car swap carousel
Red Bull Racing’s inaugural season in 2005 was more successful than most might have expected. The team hired veteran David Coulthard after his nine-year tenure at McLaren, but as well as experience, they wanted to offer opportunity for youth too.
Their solution was to hand their second seat to rookie and F3000 champion Vitantonio Liuzzi. And also to its previous occupant, Christian Klien.
For the first seven rounds, Liuzzi and Klien rotated racing duties between them. While Klien competed in the opening three rounds in Melbourne, Sepang and Bahrain, Liuzzi performed Friday practice duties. Then over the following four rounds at Imola, Barcelona, Monaco and the Nurburging, the roles were reversed. Eventually, after the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring, the team decided that Klien would race out the remainder of the championship, while Liuzzi would share Friday duties with Scott…
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