How Red Bull backed down from nuclear call — and why Dan's ...

Just as Red Bull Racing seemed set to push Sergio Pérez out of the team after a half-season of woe, it stepped back from the brink.

The Formula 1 world was braced for news this week that the Mexican would be shown the door at Milton Keynes. He’s been underperforming for months, and he’d flopped in this all-or nothing fortnight of racing in Hungary and Belgium before the mid-season break.

Instead the team confirmed he would be remaining for the foreseeable future after Monday’s crunch talks.

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It’s a decision that certainly goes against the run of play.

In the last eight rounds Pérez has been comfortably the lowest-scoring driver among the frontrunners, and that continued poor form is risking Red Bull Racing’s constructors title defence.

From a season-high 115-point lead over McLaren in Miami, Pérez’s low scores have allowed that margin to shrink to just 42 points, less than the maximum score for a team in a single weekend.

Drivers championship, last eight rounds, frontrunners

1. Max Verstappen: 141 points

2. Oscar Piastri: 126 points

3. Lewis Hamilton: 123 points

4. Lando Norris: 116 points

5. Charles Leclerc: 79 points

6. George Russell: 79 points

7. Carlos Sainz: 79 points

8. Sergio Pérez: 28 points

While Pérez is no stranger to mid-year form slumps, this is comfortably his worst.

Taking the season as a whole, there’s no meaningful performance metric against which he isn’t the worst-performing teammate in Formula 1.

Only by points scored is he saved some blushes, with Kevin Magnussen — whose Haas car is rarely in the top 10 — and the scoreless Logan Sargeant outscored more heavily by their teammates.

Sergio Pérez season averages after 14 rounds

Qualifying result: 8.4 average

Qualifying differential: 6.6 places behind Verstappen (rank: 20th)

Time differential: 0.519 seconds behind Verstappen (rank: 20th)

Race result: 6.0 average

Race differential: 3.9 places behind Verstappen (rank: 20th)

Points: 146 points behind Verstappen (outscored 2.11:1; rank: 18th)

The announcement has also come with the retention of the status quo at RB, where Daniel Ricciardo will be retained at least until the end of the year alongside the already contracted Yuki Tsunoda, according to the BBC.

Red Bull has always been reluctant to countenance sacking him in the middle of the season, not least because it would be messy just months after handing him a new deal. He’s also a low-maintenance option, being an apolitical foil to protagonist Verstappen.

“Nobody wants to make that decision,” team principal Christian Horner said, per ESPN, on Sunday night.

“What’s frustrating for everybody is Checo struggling, because nobody wants to see him struggle. Everybody wants to see him succeed.

“The team has been and is right behind him, everybody wants to see him succeed, because it hurts seeing him in the situation that is.”

Resultantly Pérez has been given every opportunity to prove his worth.

“You see glimpses,” Horner justified. “His race pace [in Hungary] weekend was strong. He had the fourth-best race pace in Budapest, but he had a difficult Saturday with a crash in quali.

“He did a good job [on Saturday in Belgium]. To be 0.05 seconds off Charles [Leclerc] on a scrubbed set of tyres and put it on the front row was a tremendous effort. Today his race faded.”

Evidently those glimpses, small though they are, were enough to kick the can down the road again.

WHAT NOW?

Red Bull Racing’s language has been crafted carefully for this crucial decision.

“Checo remains a Red Bull Racing driver despite recent speculation, and we look forward to seeing him perform at tracks he has previously excelled at after the summer break,” Horner told the factory on Monday, according to Dutch paper De Telegraaf.

The team subsequently verified the statement.

It does not say Pérez will remain with Red Bull Racing to the end of the season or for the duration of his new contract, which runs until at least the end of next year and has an option to the end of 2026.

Instead it specifically references him competing “at tracks he has previously excelled at”.

Most of those races come immediately after the August break.

Pérez has no meaningful record at the Dutch Grand Prix, but he’s a multiple podium-getter at the subsequent Italian Grand Prix, including last year, when he recovered from fifth to finish second in a close battle with Ferrari.

The Mexican’s most successful venue then follows at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Pérez is a two-time winner, one-time sprint winner and four-time podium getter in Baku, amounting to comfortably his best record at any circuit.

Last year he won the sprint race and the grand prix — his last victory to date — with genuine Verstappen-beating pace on both days.

Azerbaijan is paired with the Singapore Grand Prix, which Pérez won in 2022 in arguably his career-best performance.

Combined they amount to three of Pérez’s five victories with Red Bull Racing.

If he hasn’t proved he can recapture his form after that four-race run, then it’s hard to imagine what more it would take.

On the current scoring trajectory those four races would bring McLaren to within six points of the constructors championship.

With an unusual four-week break between Singapore and the following round in the United States, Red Bull Racing might choose that moment to re-evaluate its decision.

HORNER’S HIGH-STAKES GAMBLE

The risk of retaining Pérez isn’t simply that the team loses the constructors championship to McLaren after having amassed such a massive lead.

It’s also the signal it sends to the team internally — that Verstappen winning the drivers title, which he will almost certainly do, is enough.

That’s problematic on two levels.

The first is that it perpetuates the Red Bull program’s over-reliance on Verstappen.

The Dutchman is an obvious generational talent and one of the best to get behind the wheel, but Red Bull Racing’s Max-at-all-costs approach has made the team vulnerable.

Whereas in the past the team always had a competitive driver in the second seat — even four-time champion was paired with and beaten by Ricciardo — there’s no such pressure and therefore no contingency next to Verstappen.

The team needs him far more than he needs the team. Imagine if he were to decide to up stumps for Mercedes at the end of this or even next season.

The strategy has concentrated power in the Verstappen camp, something that came close to blowing up the entire team earlier this year.

The second problem is that Red Bull’s staff salaries are tied directly to the result of the constructors championship.

Most Formula 1 teams have a bonus payment structure linked to championship position. The teams title is what pays the prize funds, and some percentage of those winnings trickle down to salaried staff.

Despite F1’s eye-watering driver salaries, teams comprise hundreds of staff on ordinary wages — staff who are experiencing the same cost-of-living squeezes as everyone else. Wilfully risking the constructors title means wilfully risking these bonuses.

“It also brings unrest to the workforce,” Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko told Klein Zeitung earlier this month, referring to the team’s Pérez problem. “The bonuses for the employees are based on the position in the constructors’ championship, that’s the most important thing for them.”

Retaining Pérez on trajectory to lose the teams title therefore becomes something of a personal gamble for Horner. If it fails to pay off, Horner could find his leadership damaged, particularly in a year that’s already bruised his reputation.

Of course Pérez’s replacement might have struggled just as much. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

But sometimes any decision is better than indecision.

Sergio Perez has won a stay of execution. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images

WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE DANIEL RICCIARDO?

Despite all signs having pointed to him taking over from Pérez after the Belgian Grand Prix — regardless of whether you believe the seemingly made-for-TV meeting between him, Horner and RB boss Laurent Mekies in the Spa-Francorchamps paddock — Ricciardo will remain in place alongside Tsunoda at Faenza for what could be the rest of the season.

Some of that is of course on him. Had the Australian been more compelling compared to Tsunoda from earlier in the season, perhaps he could have held Red Bull Racing management to the course it looked set to go down until last night’s announcement.

If he keeps up his upward momentum, there’s still a chance he ends up at Red Bull Racing in October if Pérez fails to fire at the race at which he’s “previously excelled”.

If the Mexican gets to the end of the year but fails to help the team defend the constructors championship, continued strong form could see Ricciardo get the nod for 2025.

His fairytale Red Bull Racing return is not yet dead — far from it.

But with Red Bull Racing having kept the faith in Pérez for this long, there’s no guarantee the can won’t just be kicked down the road again later.

It means Ricciardo is now fighting just to keep his seat at RB beyond the end of the season.

His is the only Red Bull-backed seat uncommitted for 2025, and with Marko is increasingly pressuring to restore RB as a free-flowing junior team that bloods the best of its young guns, he also looks a lot like the odd one out.

Waiting in the wings is Liam Lawson, the reserve driver who impressed in his five-race run last year and who’s reportedly been promised a seat in 2025 or will be made a free agent.

A young gun with clear potential, he’d be an obvious fit for Ricciardo’s RB seat.

But the Aussie would not be safe even in the more outlandish situation that Lawson were to get the nod to replace Pérez next year.

Formula 2 star Isack Hadjar is also increasingly talked about as an F1 debutant.

The Red Bull junior has established a healthy lead in the F2 title with a 36-point buffer. If he wins the championship, he won’t be allowed to compete in the feeder series again next year.

While Red Bull has options to shuffle him around — for example, to Japan’s Super Formula — with Tsunoda as an established senior driver providing experience ballast, there’d be no reason not to take a punt on Hadjar next year.

That could mean Red Bull would have to find two seats somewhere among its four teams to get its juniors onto the grid.

It leaves Ricciardo in a precarious position.

Daniel Ricciardo’s future is uncertain. (Photo by Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images

HOW DOES THIS FIT INTO THE REST OF THE DRIVER MARKET?

There are also left-field ways this febrile driver market could open options for him.

With Carlos Sainz now confirmed at Williams, the future Audi project needs a long-term driver to build its team around.

Retaining Valtteri Bottas has been reportedly low on its list of preferences, albeit that was before last week’s management clean-out and the installation of Mattia Binotto as team boss.

Audi is reportedly interested in Lawson. Coincidentally the Kiwi’s free-agency trigger is rumoured to be in September, at which point Red Bull could be re-evaluating its line-up.

If Red Bull is still undecided, Lawson could find refuge in Audi’s manufacturer program.

One wonders what the New Zealander has made of the last 12 months of lukewarm commitment from the brand, having overlooked him for a drive this year and now seemingly backing out of a Pérez decision that could have seen him on the grid with RB next month.

The German marque was also rumoured to be pursuing Tsunoda before Red Bull took up its option to extend his contract by another year.

The Japanese ace has compared well against Ricciardo, even if the tide has turned a little against him in the last two months.

Some consider Tsunoda’s place in the Red Bull program to be limited to the end of next year given his Honda backer will decamp to become Aston Martin’s works supplier from 2026. While RB is more than happy to keep him in 2025 given his consistent and strong form, renewing his contract could also be seen as setting a buyout price for a driver they’ve spent millions developing to prevent him from walking away as a free agent later.

Neither scenario is likely, but given the way the driver market — including Red Bull — has staggered and stumbled to the mid-season break, neither can be ruled out either.

Short of looking for seats elsewhere on the grid — which he’s previously said he’s reluctant to do, preferring instead to end his career in the Red Bull program — Ricciardo really has only one option.

Push like hell.

It’s the same mission statement he had at the beginning of the year. He needs to make himself sufficiently compelling that dropping him would be detrimental and that promotion becomes a no-brainer.

There’s no doubt he’s risen to the challenge in the last two months after a slow start to the season.

He’s been RB’s better performer at five of the last six grands prix dating back to his first Sunday points in Canada. Only Silverstone saw him roundly beaten by Tsunoda in the thick of the team’s struggles with its botched upgrade rollout.

In that time he’s outscored Tsunoda 7-3 and would’ve had at least a couple more points for his tally had the team not butchered is strategy in Hungary.

“I think, in short, from Montreal I had some work to do,” he told Sky Sports on Sunday night. “We picked it up.

“I’d say Silverstone was maybe the only outlier, otherwise I’ve been really happy with how things have gone.

“Of course I would’ve loved the whole season to have been awesome, but if it starts slow, try to finish strong, and that’s where I’m at coming into the break — much more fulfilled, content.”

Continuing to improve at his current rate could keep him in the frame this year and in 2025, though you’d be brave to predict which way Red Bull will move next.