Drive to Survive caught David Coulthard telling a Formula 1 team boss he ‘could do better’ than their driver as they lamented one performance in the hit Netflix series.
Netflix has released Season 7 of Drive to Survive to cast eyes back on the 2024 term ahead of the 2025 Formula 1 season starting in Australia. The fly-on-the-wheel docuseries puts the focus back on some of the biggest storylines from the previous season as a new term looms.
Racing will start on March 16 with the 2025 Australian Grand Prix and the grid in Melbourne will not feature some of the big players from the 2024 campaign – including Sergio Perez. He has been booted out of Red Bull for Liam Lawson after costing them their constructors’ title.
Red Bull terminated Perez’s contract for the 2025 season soon after the 2024 season-finale in Abu Dhabi. The 35-year-old only scored 152 points for P8 in the F1 drivers’ championship, despite Max Verstappen winning the title on 437 points in the same RB20 the Mexican had.
David Coulthard told Christian Horner ‘I could do better’ than Sergio Perez at the 2024 F1 British Grand Prix
Perez started the 2024 term strongly with four podiums from the first five Grands Prix. But it fell apart for the six-time Grand Prix winner after round six, with Perez finishing as high as P6 once. Perez’s British Grand Prix especially enraged Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner.
Netflix even caught Horner’s foul-mouthed rant after Perez’s British GP qualifying spin as the pressure on the Mexican at Red Bull continued to grow. The Guadalajara native struggled in the mixed conditions during Q1 and found the gravel at Copse having drifted from the track.
READ MORE: Christian Horner’s best quotes about Sergio Perez before Red Bull sacking
“What the f— do we do with this one?” Horner pondered in Episode 7 as Perez beached his Red Bull at Silverstone. “If we keep going like this, we’re f——. I just don’t get it with Checo.”
Unfortunately for Perez, the 2024 British Grand Prix would not improve after he started the race from the pit lane. Red Bull took the chance to remove his car from the grid to fit a new power unit given his P19 qualifying result. Yet, in part due to their strategy, he finished P17.
Red Bull pitted Perez for intermediate tyres early in the 2024 British GP once the rain began to fall at Silverstone. But the track was still too dry for the grooved tyres, so he struggled to keep in touch with the cars ahead and ultimately finished the race two laps behind the lead.
READ MORE: Sergio Perez’s Red Bull record compared to Max Verstappen’s ex-teammates
Yet Horner did not let the somewhat mitigating circumstances overshadow how Perez never had the speed of the cars around him when Red Bull gave the Mexican the right tyres in the British GP. Neither did Coulthard, who stated he at 53 years old would be better than Perez.
“Unbelievable,” Coulthard said in the British Grand Prix pit lane as Horner reacted, “I know, I know. That was a shocker. I could put anybody in at the moment and it [would be better]. I could put you in?” To which, the Scot said: “F—— hell, man, I think I could do better.”
Silverstone was one of Sergio Perez’s many dark days in his final season with Red Bull
The 2024 British Grand Prix was one of Perez’s darkest days amid what proved to be his final of four seasons with Red Bull. Horner had elected to give the 39-time podium finisher a new contract for 2025 – which saw Red Bull pay Perez £16.5m in 2024 – but he came to regret it.
After Perez and Kevin Magnussen crashed on the first lap of the Monaco Grand Prix, crashed on his own in Canada, crashed fighting Carlos Sainz for P2 in Azerbaijan and overheated his clutch to retire in Qatar, costing Red Bull the constructors’ championship was the final straw.
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