Dumbed out of qualifying at the first hurdle in Las Vegas, Sergio Perez lamented a lack of grip in his Red Bull RB20 on a weekend in which Red Bull warned him that 2025 is not guaranteed.

Red Bull went into the Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend, part one of the season’s final triple-header, acknowledging that they need Perez to score points towards the Constructors’ Championship.

Sergio Perez suffered his sixth Q1 exit for 2024 in Las Vegas

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

The Mexican driver has scored just 20 points since the summer break, his latest slump hurting the Milton Keynes squad in the standing as they’ve fallen to third, outpaced by the two-car scoring McLaren and Ferrari teams.

“From a Constructors’ point of view, we desperately need both cars right up there working as a pair, which we haven’t had,” team principal Christian Horner told F1 TV earlier in the weekend.

“So obviously, hopefully Checo can get some strong performances in these last three races. There’s no way we’re going to be able to win the Constructors’ Championship without that.”

But after yet another woeful qualifying with Perez eliminated in Q1 for the sixth time this season, Red Bull’s chances of pulling back points have been dealt a harsh blow.

Perez was off the pace in Q1 and while he briefly worked his way up to 12th place, when all was said and done he was P16 having been booted out of qualifying by his potential Red Bull replacement, Liam Lawson. The VCARB driver claimed the final spot in Q2 by 0.068s.

Perez blamed a lack of grip for his qualifying woes.

“We’ve been lacking a lot of pace through the qualifying, and that’s been the main issue really for us,” he told the media including PlanetF1.com. “So it didn’t get any better.

“In hindsight, we should have used two sets given that we were not so competitive in Q1.

“I think just compromising the low speed has been quite tricky. And then the sliding. I feel like, if I slide a little bit too much one tyre then I finished it.”

According to the 34-year-old there is a “fundamental” problem with the RB20 but while Verstappen is able to drive around it, Perez is coming up short.

“I think we got a fundamental issue at the moment with the car that is just not working for me,” he said. “It’s where the whole brain is going, you know trying to fix it instead of compromising.

“At the moment, we come to the weekends and we just explore a lot of things, and then it’s just a difficult one to make it work.”

“It’s obviously not ideal. You know you want to be up there, especially when I know what I can do. But when you don’t have that grip underneath you then it’s really hard, and you’re prone to a lot of mistakes and so on.”

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Barring any potential penalties for those ahead of him, Perez will line up 16th on the grid for Saturday night’s 50-lap Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Although he accepts it won’t be easy, he’s not ruling out charging his way through the field at a track that saw 99 overtakes last year.

“I think tomorrow is going to be a very tricky one,” he said. “There’s a long race ahead, a lot of things will happen, and I believe that we are more competitive come races because yesterday we looked a lot better over the long race then over a single lap.”

However, time is running out for Perez to find that one big result that could save his Red Bull career.

Horner says he may even wait until the start of next year’s Australian GP weekend to make his decision.

“All the drivers that we have under contract, we’re very clear on what their contractual situations are,” said the team boss.

“We could, if we so chose, leave it all the way up until Melbourne next year if we want to because we have drivers under contract. But inevitably at the end of the year, we’ll sit down and look at all the information that’s available to us.”

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