At the end of last season, RaceFans’ decision to place Sergio Perez as the 20th ranked driver out of 22 in 2023 – ahead only of Nyck de Vries and Logan Sargeant – was not one taken lightly.
It reflected the inconsistency, the underachieving and the errors that the veteran driver made in what may well be one of the greatest Formula 1 cars of all time – and the most statistically dominant F1 car ever built.
Just over halfway through 2024, Perez has secured a contract extension keeping him with the world champions into 2025 and, potentially, beyond. Surely, that means the 34-year-old has turned a corner? Right?
Sadly, if anything, Perez has only become more of a liability for Red Bull than he was last year. After 14 rounds, he sits only seventh in the championship. He has only 47.29% of his team mate’s points total – lower than his proportion at the end of last season. Out of the top four teams, George Russell is the only driver behind him in the standings – and would have been ahead had if he had not been disqualified from Spa.
After the Chinese Grand Prix, Perez sat second in the standings after a solid start to the season, followed by an unremarkable Miami weekend. But then, he endured a six round run that was worse than any driver in the field all season.
It started with crashing in final practice at Imola, then being eliminated in Q2, before finishing eighth in the race after a trip through the gravel midrace. Then he was knocked out of Q1 in Monaco before being caught up in a frightening opening lap crash.
Immediately after celebrating his new contract extension, his Canadian Grand Prix weekend was woeful. He failed to get out of Q1 – again – clashed with Pierre Gasly at the start, then was overtaken by him, before spinning into what would eventually be retirement at turn six, causing heavy rear damage to the car. A grid penalty affected him in Spain but he was still a minute behind his race-winning team mate in eighth, then was just pure slow compared to team mate Max Verstappen and was never higher than seventh in any session.
Incredibly, the problems continued into Silverstone. While Verstappen was hunting down Lewis Hamilton for the win, Perez was two laps down in 17th after spinning out of Q1, prompting Red Bull to gamble on intermediate tyres, a strategy that did not pay off. As the pressure was mounting approaching the summer break, Perez then made yet another mistake in qualifying in Hungary, crashing out of Q1 on the damp…
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