Sergio Perez would still be in Formula 1 had he finished on the podium in Azerbaijan last season, Juan Pablo Montoya claiming that race-ending crash was the catalyst for his Red Bull exit.

Perez suffered a troubling fourth season with Red Bull in F1 2024 as he finished on 152 points to his team-mate Max Verstappen’s 437, which hurt Red Bull in the Constructors’ Championship.

It was like ‘everything disappeared’ for Sergio Perez

With the biggest disparity in points to a team-mate out of the top four teams, Perez hamstrung Red Bull in the teams’ championship and they fell to third place, costing the team millions in prize money.

Although he had signed a new two-year extension back in May after securing four podiums in the opening five races, his season was blighted by a huge drop-off in performance and Perez’s results did not recover.

Scoring a measly eight points in the final eight races of the season, the writing was on the wall and Red Bull announced after the season that they’d parted ways with the Mexican driver.

Sergio Perez’s deficit to Max Verstappen laid bare

👉F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record between team-mates

👉F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

But while could argue it was his overall lack of pace and points, the driver scoring just 67 points in the 19 races after four and final podium of the campaign in China, former F1 driver Montoya believes there was one notable moment in the season that spelled the end for Perez.

Baku.

After 11 races without a top-three result, the 35-year-old was in the fight for a podium at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, perhaps even the victory as he chased down Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc to run third.

He briefly overtook Leclerc for second going into Lap 50 of 51, but the Ferrari driver fought back immediately before Sainz pounced on Perez for third.

But coming out of Turn 32 and on the run down to 3, Sainz and Perez both tried to get the slipstream off Leclerc and made contact. They went hard into the wall and retired from the race, a DNF instead of champagne celebrations.

Montoya reckons that’s when it was all over for Perez.

“If you look at what happened to Checo,” Montoya told AS Colombian, “if Checo had ended on the podium in Baku, suddenly the story would have changed.

“But he didn’t end on the podium, it was a crash with Carlos Sainz at the end, and all the time that Checo took [catching the race leaders] disappeared.

“It was like everything disappeared.”

It’s not the first time the Colombian has spoken to the publication about Perez’s Red Bull departure, having shared his thoughts on the Mexican driver’s multi-million dollar exit shortly after the news was announced in December.

It was a split that ex-Bridgestone engineer Kees van de Grint believes cost Red Bull as much as ‘$78 million’, a number that had Montoya believing Red Bull may have kept Perez in the car for the F1 2025 season.

“I tried very hard to think that they were not going to get rid of him because when they met with the board and saw the numbers, they would have resisted for a year and, in the end, removed him at the end of that year,” he said. “I imagine that the number had to be very high to convince him.”

But in the end, Red Bull decided it was worth paying.

“What I heard from gossip,” Montoya added, “is that [his exit] was not so friendly.”

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