The first domino has fallen in the F1 driver market as Sergio Perez has been surprisingly announced by Red Bull as their driver for at least the next two seasons. This has kicked off again the angst between Christian Horner and Helmut Marko, give then 81 year old Austrian had wanted Liam Lawson in a top seat within the next two seasons.
The recent run of form of Yuki Tsunoda appears to indicate that Horner’s preferred Australian driver in the junior Red Bull squad will now be ditched to make way for the talented young New Zealander. Lawson deputised for Ricciardo when he broke his wrists at the 2023 Grand Prix in Zandvoort and scored his first points coming home in P9 in the heat of the Qatar Grand Prix when others around him were flailing in the desert temperatures.
Perez surprise 2 year contract
The two year contract for Sergio Peres has surprised many of the senior F1 paddock observers, given he has failed to capitalise on points for the team when given an uber dominant F1 car to drive. Despite a record breaking season for Max and the Red Bull team, the Mexican scrapped home in second place last year in the drivers’ championship.
Further, given the average gap in lap time between Max and Checo in qualifying this year, places them only ninth as a pairing on the current F1 grid of drivers. With Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz available to Red Bull as definite upgrades on their current number two pilot, clearly politics is at play behind the scenes.
Liam Lawson has now told Red Bull and Christian Horner to find him a seat or he’ll be looking elsewhere with immediate effect. The internal struggles at Red Bull saw Horner prevail over Dr. Helmut Marko and bring back old favourite Daniel Ricciardo to replace the hapless Nyck de Vries. Marko favoured Lawson but having failed in his bet on De Vries, Horner’s options held sway.
Speaking to Talk Sport Lawson has indicated he is in the dark about his future. “I have no idea – everything is changing at the moment. There are a lot of drivers moving around. At the moment, I don’t really know where I slot into that, or if I do at all. It’s something that I’m working towards every day at the moment.”
Lawson future now uncertain
The talented New Zealander has stated his “love” for Red Bull given his six year relationship with the team but marks Horner’s card stating, “If I could choose, I would love to be with Red Bull. But obviously, if there’s no seat there, my goal is F1. So that could be anywhere. It’s talked about a lot, it’s being managed. I’m always trying to work on trying to find out where I’m sitting within the team for my future.
“I don’t want to be in F1 because someone is injured. I want to be in F1 because a team chooses for me to be there full-time,” Lawson concluded.
Dr. Helmut Marko had publicly piled the pressure on Horner to find Lawson a driver even this year with the Red Bull junior team and now tells Kleine Zeitung, “with Liam Lawson as reserve, we have a strong driver who, contractually, can drive for another team if he does not get a seat with us in 2025. In this sense, it would be nice if we could see him in Formula One this year to have a clearer picture, but it is a complex issue. We will have to see how things evolve.”
In other F1 news the shambles that is the French owned Alpine team lurches from bad to worse. Having made a pointless announcement this week that Esteban Ocon will be leaving the Enstone based squad at the end of the season when he was out of contract anyway. Ocon and his team mate Pierre Gasly are set to run for the hills as Alpine’s mass exodus of personnel grows by the week.
Hamilton and Mercedes big dispute
Ocon stood down in Canada
Jack Doohan has been announced to make his F1 debut in free practice one at the upcoming Canadian Grand Prix, and whispers in the paddock are asking whether this will be the first of many sessions which will see Ocon benched as his contract runs down to the end of this season.
Following the extraordinary outburst from Alpine’s team boss live on French TV which saw him publicly criticise his driver for colliding with team mate Gasly on the opening lap of the Monaco Grand Prix, Ocon has clearly decided enough is enough. With an overweight car now three seasons into this set of FIA car design regulations, Alpine are there rubbing rags of F1 and boss Bruno Famin has clearly lost control of there direction of travel in which the team is going.
When Toto Wolff was forced to take a firm hand while his two drivers in Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were taking each other out, the relatively inexperienced Mercedes team boss always played the party line that matters would be discussed behind closed doors. Famin’s meltdown on Canal+ commentary during the Monaco Grand Prix demonstrates his utter lack of F1 experience and yet another shocking decision made by parent company Renault.
It now just requires each team in Formula One to find $50m outside of their sponsorship deals to have sufficient budget to hit the cost cap spending limit as defined by the FIA. Williams this week confirmed they had achieved this but sacked boss of Alpine Otmar Szafnaeur who had less than eighteen months to turn the fortunes of the French owned team around, revealed Renault were clearly not pulling their weight as their team was “ten of millions” short of the restricted spending limit.
Verstappen reacts to Perez contract extensio
On the eve of the Canadian Grand Prix, Red Bull announced a two-year contract extension for Sergio Perez, meaning that the Mexican will be team-mate to Max Verstappen (who is under contract until 2028) for the next two seasons.
Perez moved from Racing Point to Red Bull for the 2021 season, where he helped Verstappen in his quest for his first world title and was a big help, especially in Abu Dhabi. Perez himself wanted to challenge for the title at Red Bull, but was unable to achieve more than individual success. While Verstappen has gone from victory to victory and title to title in the three and a half years they have been together, setting several records along the way, Perez has ‘only’ won five Grand Prix… READ MORE
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Only the contact length is surprising, but getting to continue yet again was pretty evident for a little while.
Ocon’s departure is a mutual decision & Alpine was over the weight limit only until round 5 & maybe in early 2022, but not throughout the current technical regulation period.