Christian Horner’s patience with struggling Red Bull driver Sergio Perez seems to be thinner than ever. The Qatar Grand Prix could well be his penultimate race with the team.
Red Bull bosses will meet after the Abu Dhabi GP next weekend to make a final decision on Perez. They have been making it clear for weeks now that his seat is at risk if he doesn’t improve.
It’s unclear how they could remove him if they deem it necessary. The team handed him a new one-plus-one contract back in June.
Perez has a ‘watertight’ deal, in the eyes of the employment court, so sacking him could result in a legal battle. There doesn’t appear to be a performance clause Horner can activate.
Instead, he may have to pay off the six-time race-winner. Perez has demanded £15.7m from Red Bull if he’s to walk away.
Red Bull are desperate for Perez to retire, one journalist says, so they can avoid that enormous payoff. But he has little concrete incentive to do so.
Christian Horner didn’t ‘back up’ Sergio Perez after Franco Colapinto overtake at Qatar Grand Prix
Perez made a disastrous start to the Qatar Grand Prix weekend on Friday. After a Q1 exit in Las Vegas, he was knocked out in SQ1 ahead of the Sprint.
Given that the race only runs to one-third distance and doesn’t feature pit stops, he knew he had little chance of scoring a point. Only the top eight score in the event.
As such, Perez treated it like a test session, finishing last after a mid-race front-wing change. Replays showed fellow pit lane starter Franco Colapinto bizarrely passing him on the exit after the light went green.
Perez insisted this was deliberate so he didn’t get bogged down in a wheel-to-wheel battle. But speaking on Ted’s Notebook, Sky Sports F1’s Ted Kravitz suggested Horner didn’t share that view.
“It was embarrassing getting passed [by Colapinto],” Kravitz said. “Christian Horner had no explanation, even though Checo said it was intentional because they wanted to get clear air to do their set-up experiments – they weren’t going to score points anyway.
“That idea was not backed up by his team boss. If that was a deliberate plan by Checo and his engineer Hugh Bird, then the team boss didn’t know about it.”
Christian Horner is neglecting ‘pastoral care’ duties by keeping Sergio Perez
Perez says he wants to spend more time with his family amid the demands of a record 24-race schedule. It’s fair to ask why he wants to continue racing for Red Bull next year.
Yes, it’s a frontrunning F1 seat, but Perez isn’t able to reap the benefits. Instead, he finds himself in a brutal cycle with no answers on how to reach the same stratosphere as his teammate.
Executive director Helmut Marko openly admits Red Bull’s focus is Max Verstappen. This is, in many ways, the least desirable second seat on the grid.
Pundit Sam Bird thinks Red Bull’s treatment of Perez is ‘unhealthy’. He feels Horner is neglecting ‘pastoral care’ duties by subjecting his driver to constant, seemingly inescapable scrutiny in the media.
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