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Christian Horner suggests that Sergio Perez could lose his seat on the Red Bull F1 team if his performances are not consistent in 2023. With the Mexican’s contract ending after the 2024 season, the Milton Keynes-based team's chief feels it might be his last contract.
Speaking at the Cambridge Union about driver contracts within the Red Bull pool of talent, Horner explained:
“Well, obviously by taking up that option on Sergio for the next couple of years, it locks out the seat unless he absolutely doesn’t deliver for whatever reason, in 2023, or beginning of ’24, so for somebody like Pierre Gasly, that’s incredibly frustrating, or Alex [Albon] because it’s locked out that seat.”
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The Briton was asked if retaining Sergio Perez until 2024 had denied drivers like Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon the opportunity to be in a Red Bull car. Horner admitted it has been frustrating for them but he also believes the Mexican driver could retire, given his age and the opportunity in the future, and could open up the seat if his performances are inconsistent by 2023. Meanwhile, they plan to support the Frenchman and the Thai-British drivers as they grow in the sport.
Hypothetically, if Perez were to continue after the current contract, Horner explained Gasly and Albon’s situation saying:
“What we’ll do is try and assist to keep them in Formula 1 so that we still have the ability to look at their talent and see how that’s emerging. Because Sergio [Perez] is not getting any younger, he’s 32 years of age now, and this may well be the last contract he signs.”
Damon Hill believes Red Bull has provided Max Verstappen with a car to outperform Sergio Perez
With a strong start to the 2022 season, Sergio Perez looked more comfortable with the RB18 than Max Verstappen, who struggled to extract performance out of that car on many weekends. Damon Hill, however, believes Red Bull has tweaked the car to suit the Dutchman’s driving style which helped him dominate the 2022 F1 Canadian GP.
Analyzing the performance of the Red Bull drivers on the F1 Nation podcast, the 1996 F1 world champion said:
“Max [Verstappen] has found something because he dominated that weekend [in Canada] and with no sign of Sergio [Perez] looking to be threatening. They’ve done something. I get the feeling they’ve done something to help him because he’s not the sort of person who would have taken being out-qualified by Sergio lying down. So I think that they’ve tried to work on giving him what he really needs. And it could be that they’ve helped the front end of the car. It looked like he got rid of some of that understeer, and it could do him wonders.”
Red Bull’s 2021 challenger suited Max Verstappen more and the driver was at ease with his machinery. The Dutchman has struggled this year, however, and Sergio Perez has looked stronger in the first seven rounds of the season. The reigning champion also admitted that a bit more fine-tuning was required in his car to make the race weekend effortless.
