Red Bull advisor pinpoints one area where a potential Sergio Perez replacement needs to work on in the future

Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko said that Sergio Perez's potential replacements, Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson needed to work on their consistency. The Mexican driver is widely reported to be out of the second seat at the Austrian team after a lackluster 2024 campaign, where he finished P8 whilst his teammate Max Verstappen claimed his fourth successive driver's championship.

Sergio Perez's campaign started strong as he got four podiums in the first five races. However, the 34-year-old was unable to maintain this run for the rest of the season, putting most of the onus of scoring points on his teammate, Max Verstappen.

While appearing on the Inside Line F1 podcast on Monday, December 16, Marko spoke about an area where Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson, who are potential replacements for Sergio Perez, needed to improve. For the Japanese driver, the Austrian said:

"More consistency and he (Tsunoda) had not many crashes but for example in Mexico. There had been two, so he must be more as I said consistent and less incidents." (20:09 onwards)

While talking about the Kiwi driver, Marko said he was on a similar level as Tsunoda, adding:

"I also would say that he is in the race is more consistent that it does stop times with both types of drivers. There is some sort of variation, still but I mean I think he had 10 GPs so far, so that just comes from experience," Marko said (at 21:25).

Despite Red Bull handing a contract extension to the Mexican ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix to boost his confidence, Perez's results did not pick up.

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Max Verstappen defends Sergio Perez amid reports of his exit from Red Bull

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen said that the RB20 was a tough car to drive whilst defending his teammate Sergio Perez's struggles in the 2024 season.

In his interview with ViaPlay, the four-time F1 world champion reflected on a 'difficult' campaign for Red Bull where they lost the constructors title to McLaren (via Sportsmole):

"That was a total failure for us. It was difficult for Checo, but it wasn't always his fault. We simply had a very difficult car at times. I don't want to put him down, because he's my teammate and I get along very well with him. But I can also clearly say that not everything was his fault about how things went wrong."

Reiterating his stance on the car being the issue and not Perez, Verstappen added:

"The biggest problem we had is that the car sometimes didn't work. I know what Checo's driving style is, and the car that we had at one point was just very difficult to drive, also for me. That doesn't help, of course."

Sergio Perez joined the Red Bull F1 team at the beginning of the 2021 season and helped the Austrian team to two constructor's championships in 2022 and 2023. He also helped Max Verstappen win his first title against Lewis Hamilton in 2021 as he acted as a rear guard gunner on several occasions.