Why there is little reason to rethink Perez’s time at Red Bull

You have to admit, Sergio Perez has a point: his successors at Red Bull have not really delivered any justification for his sacking at the end of last year.

Facing the media – for the first time since his mixed-zone interview after the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – on the day his new Cadillac deal was announced, he had two clear messages to deliver.

First, that he is coming back to gain pleasure from competing in Formula 1 and to leave on his own terms. And second, that everyone can see even more clearly how tough his old job at Red Bull really is. Just look at what Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda have managed in what was meant to be his car.

“I don’t think I have anything to prove, when you see the number of points they’ve scored. It’s like five points in the entire season,” he told reporters during a virtual media call, deliberately nonchalant as he dismissed the combined tally of Tsunoda and Lawson in the first part of 2025.

In fact, Tsunoda has scored seven, but you can’t help but think Perez got it ‘wrong’ on purpose: the number is so small it barely matters.

“So, I’ve got nothing to prove in that regard,” he emphasised, inviting everyone to draw the inevitable conclusion: it wasn’t him who was the problem.

Crashing out of qualifying in Hungary last year added to the pressure on Perez

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

“To me, it’s more of a coming back to enjoy the sport,” he immediately linked it to the other part of his message. “The sport that I love, the sport that has given me so much. I couldn’t afford to leave the way I left the sport. And this is why I’m coming back with this new project.”

Yet, while wanting to end his F1 career on his own terms shows ambition – after all, he could have simply enjoyed time with his family, with his fortune made already – nothing suggests that Perez can truly add anything significant to his legacy with Cadillac.

Whatever happens at Red Bull now does not make its decision on Perez any less understandable. That Lawson, a driver with 11 grand prix starts, could not score in two races is hardly a shock.

He was beaten in qualifying almost every weekend that entire year, and hadn’t stood on a podium since the late spring in a car Verstappen used to win the championship

And while you might hope that Tsunoda, with four seasons in the junior team, could do better than seven points, he had his own excuses: being thrown in mid-season, being asked to adapt to what is often described as the trickiest car on the grid, and racing Max Verstappen with down-spec equipment for much of his stint.

Those are nothing more than excuses, no doubt – but still, Perez’s situation was different.

Having to deal with a tricky car hardly counts the same when Perez not only had a 10-year career behind him before joining Red Bull, but also four seasons inside the team.

And it was the last of those years that proved the hardest: he scored 49 points (to be precise) in his last 18 races with Red Bull, was beaten in qualifying almost every weekend that entire year, and hadn’t stood on a podium since the late spring in a car Verstappen used to win the championship. That is at least as damning as Tsunoda’s and Lawson’s seven points combined.

Could Red Bull have handled things better when its driver was struggling?

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

It wasn’t the car, after all, that made him crash in Qatar under the safety car. Perez’s performances at the end of last year can only be explained as buckling under pressure, while speculation about his seat remained the most discussed topic of the second half of the season.

Even with 15 years of experience in F1, he could not handle it properly. And that alone explains why his time reached its inevitable end.

If anything needs reconsidering, it’s probably the way Red Bull handled Perez during his struggles, steadily ramping up the pressure even when it was clear that he was not coping well.

F1’s media world is a curious one, where paddock gossip and published narratives often overlap. It was no coincidence that constant media talk about Perez’s days being numbered turned out to be true – down to the widespread belief that Lawson would eventually get the seat. Red Bull did little to push back against that noise, and that surely made his crisis worse.

Whether Red Bull will actually take any lessons from it remains to be seen. But a driver with Perez’s experience was expected to deal with it better anyway. Ultimately, he did not.

So ‘Checo’ is right. There is nothing left to prove about his Red Bull years – or about his career as a whole. Whatever awaits him with Cadillac will not change how we view his time alongside Verstappen. But the chance to sweeten the aftertaste of his F1 exit is not a bad reason to return.

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the October 2025 issue and subscribe today. 

By joining Cadillac, there’s an opportunity for Perez to conclude his F1 career on his own terms