Last Updated on December 17 2024, 1:50 pm

Sergio Perez has been racing for most of the 2024 Formula One season under a cloud yet it didn’t start like that at all. Checo claimed four podiums in the first five races and after just five rounds he stood on 85 points and was in second place, just 25 behind his team mate Verstappen.

Just 67 points across the next 19 rounds saw the Mexican driver finish eight amongst the top four teams drivers and he failed to make it out of Q1 a shocking 6 times across the second half of the season.

Yet come early June and the Canadian Grand Prix, Red Bull announced a new one year extension to Checo’s contract, later claiming they hoped this would renew his confidence. Retirements in Monaco and Canada were followed by nothing better than a single P7 in Belgium as F1 headed into the summer break.

 

 

 

Red Bull ever hopeful for Checo

Paddock whispers were rampant Checo would be replaced by Daniel Ricciardo come Zandvoort, yet when the F1 circus arrived in the Netherlands Perez remained inside the Red Bull car. “We know that there’s tracks that he’s won at coming up,” explained team boss Christian Horner at the Dutch circuit.

“We’ve got Azerbaijan where he’s won both a Sprint and Grand Prix on the same weekend. He’s won a fantastic race in Singapore against Charles Leclerc in mixed conditions. He’s been very quick at Monza.”

The four races before the autumn break yielded just 13 points for Checo with the two triple header weekends set to come thick and fast on F1’s resumption. Again there was talk Perez would announce his retirement from F1 at his home Grand Prix in Mexico City, before 100’s of thousands of his adoring fans.

Perez remained insistent he had a contract to drive for Red Bull next season and he would see it through, although the mood music from Christian Horner began to change. The Red Bull team boss had fielded all questions Perez with the mantra “the team is doing everything we can to support Checo.” Come Qatar Horner introduced a new notion that the decision to retire rested with his Mexican driver.

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Horner gives Perez his options

“I think he’s old enough and wise enough to come to his own conclusions but there is still a race to go so let’s get to the end of Abu Dhabi and see where we are at,” Horner concluded.

Job done. Perez would be leaving, the details of how this would happen, clearly very much still up in the air. Perez woeful performance this season cost the team its coveted seventh constructors’ championship and along with it $18m for dropping from first to third this year.

As the only driver on the F1 grid from Latin America, Perez attracts huge sponsorship for both himself and the team. The brands associated with Checo reportedly pump in $40m a year to the Red Bull Racing coffers of which $10m goes towards Perez’s remuneration.

In a number of F1 circles, this loss of funds should Checo leave was reportedly creating a dilemma for Red Bull, yet given they were the first F1 team to declare a profit in the cost cap era this assumption is highly questionable. In the latest accounts published Red Bull declared revenues of $402m and with the cost cap set at $135m there is plenty to go around for non-F1 racing expenditure.

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A very public standoff

So why didn’t Red Bull just announce they were letting him go? Why didn’t Checo take his final bow in Mexico and in Abu Dhabi?

Ex-team boss of Haas F1, Guenther Steiner now sheds some light on this from his own experience running a team. Were Red Bull to breach their contract with Perez, it would be payable in full according to the contracts recognition board.

Daniel Ricciardo was the most recent high profile F1 drivers to get the order of the boot while he was enjoying a highly lucrative deal at McLaren. The amount he received was reportedly some $30m to leave the team, much more than his annual remuneration. Of course Ricciardo would have ‘damage to reputation’ and ‘damage to future earnings’ clauses included because as a driver being sacked from an F1 team, hardly makes him the most attractive options for another employer.

And it is for this reason Steiner believes we’ve seen the very public stand off between Horner and Perez, with the Red Bull boss almost pleading for his driver to leave following his comments in Qatar.

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Perez digs in his heels

“A driver normally has got some personal service agreements, PSAs, with sponsors of his own,” Steiner told the Red Flags podcast. “And for sure, they were for next year as well.

“So he can claim ‘guys, you made my life difficult here because now I’m unemployed, and all the sponsors don’t pay me. Because why would they pay me if I’m not driving a race car?’”

Lost future external earnings is clearly a big part of any F1 drivers payoff and it seems Red Bull were hoping Perez would just take his m money and run.

“How Christian spoke, I think he tried to send Checo a message saying ‘hey, resign.’ And I think if he would resign, they would pay him the whole money. I think they had to pay Danny Ric [Daniel Ricciardo] the money when he was sacked.”

“I think it was more like ‘hey, if you go away, we pay you’ and then obviously Checo maybe comes back and says ‘yeah you can pay me, but you pay also the money I don’t get, which I which I would have gotten [from his sponsors].”

“Schumi could do it…. but Hamilton can’t”

 

 

 

Lawson to drive alongside Max

Steiner calls time on the Perez era with Red Bull Racing for a number of reasons, with the primary being not winning championships. 

“Obviously they won the Drivers’ Championship and they didn’t win the manufacturers’ because they had only one car or they were racing with one and a half cars instead of two. At some stage somebody needs to take responsibility for that.”

Today the news broke that a deal has been agreed in Milton Keynes which will see Liam Lawson step up alongside Max Verstappen. Despite auditioning for the drive at the test in Abu Dhabi, it appears for a fifth year in a row the Japanese driver will race for the sister team.

Isack Hadjar is expected to join Tsunodo at VCARB, who improved this year as he led the charge for the team. Yuki was placed with the team as part of a deal with engine supplier Honda and cold move to Aston Martin with his sponsors as Red Bull go it alone on building their own powertrain.

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Is the Rwanda race an F1 ruse?

The FIA held its annually gala over the weekend in one of their more unusual country members in Rwanda. The Formula One prizes were handed out with Max Verstappen having claimed his fourth consecutive drivers’ title and McLaren their first constructors’ championship since 1988.

Officially the Republic of Rwanda is a land locked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa where the Africa great lakes region and the Southwest plains converge. Much of the country is at altitude hence the French description, “the land of a thousand hills.”

The capital of the country is Kigali with a population of just over a million it is the largest city in the West African state. Rwanda is de facto a one party state ruled by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader is Paul Kagame who was installed following the end of the civil war in 1994…. READ MORE