Perez to take six-month sabbatical before deciding on F1 return attempt

Axed Red Bull driver Sergio Perez will take at least six months off racing in 2025 before deciding whether he will even attempt to make a Formula 1 comeback.

Perez’s F1 career was brought to a sudden halt at the end of the 2024 season when Red Bull decided to pay him not race in the upcoming campaign after his lengthy string of poor performances last season.

These culminated in Red Bull missing the 2024 constructors’ championship title to go along with Max Verstappen’s fourth consecutive drivers’ crown – claimed in the other RB20 – and the team eventually decided not to go ahead with Perez’s two-year contract extension and instead promote Liam Lawson in his place.

In his first public comments since Red Bull and Perez reached the agreement in mid-December 2024 which means he will spend the coming period on the F1 sidelines, Perez said, “things will come in their own time” regarding his racing future.

“In the next six months I will make a decision on what's next for my career,” added Perez, who was speaking at the Feria de Leon event in the Mexican state of state of Guanajuato.

“I am totally happy, and I will return to Formula 1 if that is what makes me happiest.”

Perez had insisted throughout the end of the 2024 F1 season that he would honour his side of his expected deal with Red Bull – a hardball negotiating tactic to ensure he would receive a payoff to not race in 2025.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

He therefore said he was also proud that he “never gave up” in during the run of races that followed his now irrelevant contract extension, which was signed early last summer.

“The important thing is that I never gave up,” Perez said. “Whenever something difficult happened in my career better things came and that was because I never gave up.

“I'm very excited about what's to come this year and I'm very calm and very happy.

“I am really enjoying my children, my family, my friends. I am finally going to travel, because in these years I travelled all over the world, but without knowing it”.

If Perez does not achieve an F1 return in 2026 – his Red Bull exit coming after all the other seats for the upcoming campaign had already been filled – he will end his career in the category with six wins and three poles from 281 starts.

Red Bull has previously said Perez will “still be involved with the brand and the team” – per team boss Christian Horner – in an off-track capacity, although this appears yet to take shape as he was not wearing team kit at the Leon festival.