Sergio Perez’s F1 career ended at the conclusion of the 2024 season. The Mexican may leave F1 permanently with a record of 281 races and 6 wins. But his departure had been foreshadowed for some time, given the decline he faced in recent years.
The last year at Red Bull
Perez’s poor performance, unable to consistently keep up with his teammate at Red Bull, was inevitably the main factor behind the team’s downfall. The Austrian team went from world champion constructors to third in the standings, behind McLaren and Ferrari, in just one year.
The 152 points Perez scored represent only 34.70% of Max Verstappen’s 437, while Oscar Piastri (292) earned 78.07% of Lando Norris’s 374 points. Carlos Sainz (290) even managed 81.46% of Charles Leclerc’s 356 points.
The math is simple: Red Bull would have only needed a Sergio Perez capable of scoring just over half of Verstappen’s points to become the constructors’ world champion. The Austrian team finished “only” 77 points behind McLaren. So, if Perez had gained those 77 extra points to reach 229, Red Bull would have won the constructors’ championship, and Perez would likely still have a seat for 2025.
Perez’s overall numbers at Red Bull
In total, Perez raced 89 times for Red Bull, from Bahrain 2021 to Abu Dhabi 2024, his final race. The data on his qualifying and race performances show a clear divide, based on which Perez’s qualifying performance with Red Bull can be divided.
Up until the 2023 Miami GP (48 races), the Mexican had an average starting position of 5.1. Although not at the level of his teammate, Checo consistently ensured a Top 5 finish in Saturday’s qualifying. In the following 41 races, his average qualifying position rose to 10.05.
In contrast, his race performance was somewhat better, with generally acceptable results. However, Miami 2023 marked a crucial point in his career. On that occasion, the gap between him and his teammate was huge. Furthermore, Red Bull had ‘sacrificed’ Perez in terms of car development, disregarding his complaints. With all this uncertainty and lack of trust, Perez’s mental decline seemed inevitable even then.
Sergio Perez before joining Milton Keynes
When considering the years before joining Red Bull, even more interesting details emerge.
It should be noted that the numbers (about eleventh place on average in qualifying and eighth in the race) are inevitably influenced by the cars Perez was driving at that point in his career. Driving a midfield car during that period meant realistically hoping for a maximum of a seventh-place finish.
Nevertheless, the interesting statistic concerns the positions Perez gained in races compared to his starting position. At Red Bull, on average, he gained about 2.9 positions. In the period before joining Christian Horner’s team, he gained an average of 2.5 positions on race day. The difference is minimal (0.4), highlighting the surprising consistency of the Mexican driver with such different cars in terms of performance.
However, in these considerations, the rest of the grid must inevitably be taken into account. Compared to his years at Force India (and his early years at Red Bull), F1 has become much more competitive, with every mistake being punished more easily. As a result, the expected difference between these two phases of Perez’s career should have been much larger. Gaining only 0.4 positions per race, despite driving a clearly more competitive Red Bull compared to the Force India/Racing Points, is concerning. It becomes even more alarming when considering the results Verstappen achieved after any underwhelming qualifying session.
The focal point of Sergio Perez’s time at Red Bull was his role as a second driver: a fundamentally midfield driver, chosen by a top team to be a steady presence for a team that was struggling at the time (2020). Before him, Kvyat, Albon, and even Pierre Gasly had already failed in this role.
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