Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez slid back through the field Sunday. Will that alter his Red Bull future?
The Belgian Grand Prix brought to a close the first act of the 2024 Formula 1 season. As the grid heads to the summer shutdown for some well-deserved rest and relaxation, several questions await answers over the rest of the season, but the biggest one is this:
When the grid roars back to life at the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, will Sergio Pérez still be Max Verstappen’s teammate?
Sunday at Spa brought to a close a brutal stretch of races for Pérez, who began the day in position for the kind of finish that might have erased any doubt about his Red Bull future. Thanks to a strong qualifying performance, and a grid penalty handed down to Verstappen who was fastest on Saturday, Pérez began Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix up on the front row alongside Charles Leclerc, who inherited pole position due to Verstappen’s penalty.
However, Pérez did not finish near the front. The Red Bull driver crossed the line in P8, well behind Verstappen. While a disqualification handed down to George Russell promoted Pérez to seventh — and he secured a bonus point for posting the fastest lap of the race — that meant just seven points for himself and the team, a far cry from expectations given where he started.
As a result, Pérez limps into the shutdown having scored just 28 points over the last eight race weekends, well off the pace being set by the other seven drivers currently at the front of the grid:
You can see what this stretch has done to Pérez in the F1 Drivers’ Championship standings, courtesy of this graphic from Formula 1 Points:
Pérez left Miami sitting second in the Drivers’ standings with 103 points, just 33 points behind Verstappen in first place. But now as the summer shutdown begins, Pérez has fallen to seventh, and were it not for Russell’s disqualification, the Mercedes driver would have taken that position away from Pérez and dropped him to ninth.
While his standing in the Drivers’ Championship may be a problem for Red Bull, what this swoon has done to the team in the Constructors’ Championship is a more immediate matter. At the moment Red Bull heads to the summer break with just a 42-point lead over McLaren, the closest things have been at the top of the standings since Charles Leclerc’s win in Monaco, when Ferrari trailed Red Bull by just 24 points.
But since Miami, here is what the top four teams have done:
Both McLaren and Mercedes have outscored Red Bull over this stretch, but it is McLaren’s advantage over these last eight race weekends that has closed the gap at the top of the table.
An advantage made possible in part by Pérez’s summer swoon.
Following the Belgian Grand Prix Pérez told the official F1 channel that Sunday’s race was “really bad,” but refused to address any speculation about his Red Bull future.
“Yeah, it was a really bad race for us,” said Pérez. “It started well on the first stint, but then the second stint was really complicated with going on to the medium compound. That really hurt a lot, you know, when I had to push and the degradation was just quite high.
“But ultimately, we didn’t have the pace today.”
Pérez then dismissed a question about speculation over his future.
“You know, I don’t think I will be responding anymore to any future speculation. I’m here with the team fully committed. I think, as a team, we have a lot of stuff to focus on, to get ourselves ready for the second half of the season,” said Pérez. “I think I’ve had enough of this speculation, and I’ve said everything I had to and, yeah, so it’s time to take a break and regroup with the team and then get back to it.”
Pérez’s determination to “regroup” and “get back to it” is admirable, and any time an athlete shows that kind of drive it should be commended. But the problem for Pérez is that this run of form is “unsustainable,” as described by Red Bull Team Principal. An overwhelming theme of the first half of this F1 season is that it is not 2023 again, and Red Bull is not the dominant package as they were a year ago.
When Verstappen could have carried the team to a Constructors’ Championship alone.
This season, given the strength shown by McLaren and Mercedes in recent weeks, as well as Ferrari earlier in the year, Red Bull truly needs both drivers performing and scoring big points regularly to fend off their rivals at the sharp end of the grid. The results, however, speak for themselves. These eight race weekends have ignited a fight at the front and put Pérez’s future squarely in doubt.
Following Sunday’s Grand Prix Horner noted that, as the team always does, they will “regroup” on Monday and “look at how we can come back fighting” following the summer break.
“We have a lot to reflect on as we go into the summer break. We continue to lead in both the Constructors and Drivers Championships but convergence within the field means the gap is ever closing,” said Horner. “We will regroup on Monday, as we always do before a break and look at how we can come back fighting for the second half of the season.”
Horner also said that while the team will have a “good look” at why Pérez fell back through the field after starting up front, Sunday’s result will not “impact” his future.
“We need to go through it all and have a good look, but obviously, we didn’t want to go from second to eighth, as I’m sure, Lando didn’t want to go from fourth to sixth,” said Horner to the media on Sunday. “You never want to go backwards.
“Today won’t impact anything,” continued Horner.
“With Checo, obviously we need both cars scoring. We can see McLaren have taken, I think, another seven or eight points out of us today in the constructors’ and we need to stop that. We’ve got to bounce back after the summer break.
“So we need Checo up there. Yesterday he was great in qualifying – unfortunately today hasn’t quite worked out.”
For his part, before declaring that he was done talking about his future, Pérez was adamant at Spa, he will be back with Red Bull after the break. Speaking ahead of the race the driver stated he would be back with the team “100%” after the break, and emphasized that when speaking with the media following the race.
He must be more confident about that Monday meeting at Milton Keynes than the rest of us are.
