Having left Red Bull at the end of last season, six-time F1 race winner Sergio Perez revealed that the decision process that led to his departure from the Milton Keynes-based outfit was both unexpected and rapid.
Sergio Perez joined Red Bull for the 2021 F1 season. The Mexican driver took his first victory for Red Bull at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, finishing the season fourth in the drivers’ standings.
Pérez then went on to secure further wins in Monaco and Singapore in 2022, and he also grabbed his maiden pole position in Saudi Arabia en route to a third-place in the drivers’ standings. The 2023 F1 season saw Pérez finish runner-up to Verstappen in the 2023 World Drivers’ Championship, after additional victories in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan.
However, the 34-year-old endured a tough season last year, struggling for pure pace in qualifying which often led to a difficult race on Sunday. Following this winless 2024 campaign, Pérez and Red Bull mutually agreed to terminate his contract.
Reflecting on his exit from Red Bull, the Mexican driver revealed that the decision process was both unexpected and rapid.
“Everything happened really late in the season. I wasn’t really expecting it to happen. It only became clearer once we were in Qatar, and we started to discuss and negotiate my exit of the team. It all happened very quickly.
“For me, it was very simple, the car is just quite difficult to get 100% out of it, to get the confidence out of it – and the things I struggled with, even Adrian [Newey] talked about them.”
Despite parting ways with Red Bull, Perez hopes that his former team will perform well in the future, and he has confirmed that he still has friends at the Austrian-Anglo outfit.
“I really want the team to do well, as I have a lot of friends at the team. I spent four years with them and I want to see them doing well. It’s just a very hard thing to talk about.
“Right now, I’m on the outside, I’ve been in touch with some team members there – but when you’re not there internally, it’s hard to know [what’s happening].”
As for Yuki Tsunoda, who has recently replaced his own replacement Liam Lawson, Perez claimed that he hopes that the Japanese driver will perform well.
“Woody [Richard Wood], who is a great friend of mine, is engineering Yuki now so I really hope they do well. Yuki has the talent, has the speed and, more than that, you need the mentality to cope with it. I think he has the right mentality and the right attitude to cope with it. I hope they will succeed.”
F1
