“I’m not f***ing leaving.”
Those are the words, channelled through Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort in the Wolf of Wall Street, Sergio Pérez directed at his doubters after surviving his four-race probation after the Singapore Grand Prix.
Rumours have dogged Pérez all season. The latest — that he could be poised to announce his retirement after his home Mexico City Grand Prix to avoid being sacked — has been given particularly short shrift by the Mexican via a 17-second clip from the 2013 biopic.
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With Mexico just two races from now, it always seemed unlikely, particularly given how few threats remain to his position.
Daniel Ricciardo, who returned to the Red Bull family with the express intention of unseating Pérez at Red Bull Racing, had been axed suddenly after an unconvincing 18 rounds at RB.
His replacement, Liam Lawson, is still green. Red Bull Racing management appears to have no faith in incumbent Yuki Tsunoda. The rest of the 2025 driver market is all tied up.
For the second time this season Pérez has avoided all consequences for the form dip that’s cost Red Bull Racing the constructors championship lead. The Mexican is off scot-free.
He has reason to smile.
But Pérez would be wise not to get ahead of himself, for in what could be the title of Red Bull’s end-of-season review film, the can has been only kicked a little further down the road.
PÉREZ HASN’T IMPROVED ENOUGH
When Red Bull Racing gave Pérez his first stay of execution at the mid-season break, it came with some clear conditions that it would require him to prove he could recover his form in what appeared to be a four-round time line.
That window of opportunity included the Azerbaijan and Singapore grands prix, two races at which he’s previously excelled.
If he was going to perform anywhere this season, it was going to be here.
As a reminder, below were Pérez’s vital statistics relative to Verstappen up to the mid-season break.
Sergio Pérez averages, rounds 1 to 14
Qualifying result: 8.4 average
Qualifying differential: 6.6 places behind Verstappen
Time differential: 0.519 seconds behind Verstappen
Race result: 6.0 average
Race differential: 3.9 places behind Verstappen
Points: 146 points behind Verstappen
How did Pérez fare during his four-round probation?
Barely any better.
Azerbaijan was the obvious exception. Pérez is the most successful driver in the history of the Baku City Circuit, being the only one to have won the race more than once.
Of course it was going to be the venue where he outqualified Verstappen for the first time all season — for the first time, in fact, since the 2023 Miami Grand Prix last May.
He came close to beating Verstappen in the race too before he got himself caught up in a completely unnecessary crash with Carlos Sainz two laps from home. Both drivers were judged to have been at fault — in other words, Pérez played a crucial role in costing himself his first intrateam victory of the year and at least 15 precious championship points.
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But as good as Pérez was in Baku — and credit must be paid where it’s due — Verstappen’s struggles were down to a set-up gamble made before qualifying. Had he not attempted to engineer victory rather than settle for what probably could have been a podium finish, there’s every chance he would’ve been, as usual, ahead of Pérez in the sessions that counted.
Azerbaijan has therefore been excluded from the data below as an aberration at an outlying track rather than a genuine sign of meaningful improvement.
Sergio Pérez averages, rounds 15–16 and 18
Qualifying result: 8.67 average (0.27 places worse)
Qualifying differential: 5.0 places behind Verstappen (1.6 places closer)
Time differential: 0.562 seconds behind Verstappen (0.042 seconds slower)
Race result: 8.0 average (2.0 places worse)
Race differential: 4.7 places behind Verstappen (0.77 places further back)
Points: 187 points behind Verstappen (41 points further adrift)
By most metrics Pérez has got worse relative to his average since the mid-season break.
It’s important to note that if you were to count only Pérez’s results since round 6, when his form slump started, these numbers would all represent improvements.
But it’s equally important to note qualifying and finishing five places behind Verstappen isn’t good enough in a close championship fight.
Certainly Pérez’s paltry 13 points since the mid-season break — compared to Verstappen’s 54 and top scorer Lando Norris’s 80 — is totally unsustainable.
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RED BULL’S BACKSTOP
Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has twice in the last week admitted Daniel Ricciardo was retained at RB this season as a “backstop” against Perez’s slumping form — though both times he neglected to acknowledge that Pérez’s form has already cost his team the constructors championship lead.
In any case, the rationale for not subbing Ricciardo in — despite appearing to have made the decision to do so in July — was that the Australian hasn’t been compelling enough in the first half of the season.
Fair enough. Ricciardo lacked consistency this year despite a decent run of form just before the break, and Red Bull Racing wanted more than that before breaking Pérez’s freshly signed contract.
It’s what’s added significant impetus to Lawson being brought in before the end of the season.
“We need answers for the bigger picture in terms of drivers,” Horner told the F1 Nation podcast. “Of course with six races remaining it’s the perfect opportunity to line Liam up alongside Yuki to see how he performs over the remaining six grands prix.
“This goes beyond [RB]; it encompasses Red Bull Racing. Obviously we’ve got a contract with Sergio for next year, but you’ve always got to have an eye out in terms of what comes next. Is that going to be Liam? Or do we need to look outside the pool?
“Last year Liam jumped in and he beat Yuki in Singapore and Japan and was quick from the outset, and he’s a tough racer. We know that. He’s very adaptable. Certainly the testing he’s done for us in the Red Bull Racing car this year has been very encouraging.
“We know that Yuki is a very fast driver. He can definitely extract a lap. He’s not a rookie anymore. It’s his fourth year of grand prix racing, he’s got a lot of experience under his belt now. Taking him as the data point, we saw with Daniel where he compared to Yuki. It will be very interesting to see how Liam performs over the last six remaining races.”
There’s little doubt Lawson has been brought into RB as Red Bull Racing’s next backstop.
He’s here to replace Pérez, and he has six races to make it happen.
“I need to perform, basically,” Lawson told Newstalk ZB when asked what it will take to have the details of his 2025 contract confirmed. “I need to try and obviously show my worth in F1 and I would say do a similar job to what I did last year.
“That’s what’s given me the shot now, is what happened last year. I just need to do enough to stay in the seat next year.”
LAWSON’S OBJECTIVES ARE CLEAR
How well did Lawson go last season?
The Kiwi had a brief five-race cameo replacing the injured Ricciardo.
That sample size is whittled down by excluding the Dutch Grand Prix, where he was thrown into the car on Saturday morning for a super challenging wet-dry two days of running. He unsurprisingly qualified last but finished the race only two places behind Tsunoda.
His run-ending Qatar Grand Prix was a sprint weekend, compromising his performance. That’s also excluded for being unrepresentative.
His representative run comprised the Italian, Singapore and Japanese grands prix.
Of those three races, both he and Tsunoda finished only the Japanese Grand Prix, where the Kiwi finished one place ahead.
But we can compare their qualifying form at all three venues to give us a reasonable picture of performance.
Across the three tracks Lawson was on average 0.187 seconds slower than Tsunoda but only 0.7 places behind him.
For reference, over this season Ricciardo has been 0.171 seconds slower and 1.6 places behind Tsunoda in qualifying.
It’s an impressive comparison given the gulf in experience between the antipodeans.
Given those numbers, you can understand why Red Bull has been keen to get him onto the grid with RB.
He’ll join the grid in better shape than last year. Not only has he been mentally preparing for his debut for weeks, but he’s had the benefit of having been fully embedded in the RB team as a reserve driver since completing last year’s racing program.
But there are some elements of the challenge for which he’ll simply have to brace.
“I would say I’m better prepared — definitely more prepared — this year than I was last year,” he told Newstalk ZB.
“There’s so much to learn in F1 that, honestly, even if you’re not driving and you’re a reserve, you’re absorbing so much information.
“At the same time it’s slightly later in the season this year, so these guys have done three quarters of a season.
“Obviously I’ve been training like crazy all year to try and be ready for something like this, but even in the few tests that I’ve done this year, there’s nothing like being race fit, and it’s going to be challenging in Austin.
“It’s always a big jump. It’s going to be tough to jump in.’
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Adding to the challenge is that he’s never raced at four of the tracks. He’s never even visited three of them.
Half of the remaining rounds are also sprint weekends, which will threaten to throw him off his rhythm.
“The ones I haven’t done are Austin, Vegas and Brazil,” he said. “Fortunately I’ve done a free practice session in Mexico once.
“It’s still going to be challenging, but at least I’ve driven the track, then the same with Abu Dhabi — I’ve driven it in in Formula 1; I did a free practice session there in the Red Bull.
“But the tough thing about Austin is it’s a sprint weekend, so it’ll be one practice session and then straight into sprint quali, and obviously I’m going to have to try and learn as much as I can in one session and then go into a qualifying.
“Even though I’ve done plenty of sim work, it’s going to be a big challenge.”
NOT F***ING LEAVING?
Lawson’s ascent will be steep, but he’s made it to the summit before, and there’s little indication anything more than what he showed last season will be required to make his six-race blast a success.
The door has clearly been left open to a Red Bull Racing promotion thereafter, with the team notably stopping short of saying where he’ll be racing in 2025.
While Lawson says his current deal is for six races “at this stage”, surely only a real disaster could see him dropped next season.
Indeed it seems unlikely he isn’t already signed for next year given talk about his September contract option was for 2025, not this season.
Instead the lack of detail only appears to give Red Bull ample wriggle room to decide at a later date which of its teams he’ll race for.
Given Pérez’s performances this season have already lost Red Bull Racing the title lead — and will almost certainly lose it the constructors championship — it’s difficult not to see Lawson’s late RB promotion as a Red Bull Racing audition.
“It’s very, very special, but we don’t have much time to really let it sink; we’ve got to get straight to work,” Lawson said.
Pérez’s position might be that he’s not f***ing leaving.
But circumstances eventually caught up with Jordan Belfort too.
If he can’t pull off what would be the mother of all form turnarounds in the final six races, whether or not he leaves — at the third time of asking — surely won’t be in his own hands by the end of the year.
Source Agencies
