After four years, Sergio Perez’s stint as Max Verstappen’s team mate is over.
He was the fifth driver to take on what increasingly looks like one of the toughest jobs in Formula 1. But while Verstappen monopolised the drivers’ championship during that time, Red Bull haven’t swept the constructors’ titles in the way they did in the Sebastian Vettel-Mark Webber era.
Given the strength of competition they faced from Mercedes in 2021, Perez’s first year at the team, winning that title was always going to be a stretch. But the 2024 constructors’ championship undoubtedly should have been theirs. Verstappen won the drivers’ title by 63 points while Perez ended the year 285 points off his team mate.
If 2021 was a one-sided affair between the two Red Bull drivers, Perez enjoyed a stronger 2022. In the first year of F1’s ‘ground effect’ regulations there were clearly times when he found the car’s handling more to his liking than Verstappen, and his affinity for temporary tracks in particular shone through.
That was seldom the case after the first few rounds of 2023. That year, Perez’s growing struggles were obscured by the sheer dominance of Red Bull’s RB19. Even so, his pair of wins paled in comparison to his team mate’s 19, and Verstappen would have still won the title even if he hadn’t returned for the last 10 races after the summer break.
There were signs towards the end of 2023 that Perez had rediscovered his form, and that continued into the first races of this season. As Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was at pains to point out yesterday, Perez stood on the podium four times in the first five rounds, which was apparently the point at which they decided to commit to him for two more years.
With the benefit of hindsight, this looks like a disastrous call, as Perez never appeared in the top five again all year. He took just nine points over the final eight rounds, which was clearly unacceptable, and may have triggered the performance clauses in his contract Horner alluded to.
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Not that his two immediate predecessors performed significantly better. Since Daniel Ricciardo left Red Bull at the end of 2018, Verstappen has enjoyed near-total superiority over his team mates.
Red Bull were clearly keen to reform the Verstappen-Ricciardo line-up when the opportunity to rehire their…
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