Actually, everything seemed to be going well for Sergio Perez in 2024. In the first races of the new season, the Mexican, who had been a bit under the weather at Red Bull last year, had shown a new rhythm and recently seemed increasingly on course for a contract extension. But as soon as Formula 1 arrived in Europe, the new approach no longer seems to be working.
This quickly brings back unpleasant memories of last year. Was the new Perez just a figment of his imagination? Are the European races now a mental hurdle? Despite the disastrous performances in Imola and Monaco, Perez continues to receive support from the team.
Has Perez’s new approach already collapsed in Europe?
According to the analysis by Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, Perez’s series had a psychological start last year with his clear defeat to Max Verstappen in Miami. Before that, Perez had won two of four races and thought he was in the fight for the World Championship. The Miami defeat was immediately followed by a major driving error that resulted in an accident in Monaco. In five of the six races after Miami, he did not make it into Q3.
Since then, Perez has not won again, but at least he managed to save the runner-up title. Then it was time to take a deep breath. In 2024, he wanted to do things differently. Self-knowledge is known to be the first step towards improvement: “If you have problems and a teammate like Max, who delivers week after week, and you keep struggling, then you get into this negative spiral.”
“You’re just chasing the car setup, and there’s probably not much to be gained there,” Perez describes. “You should just restart, get your head in a good place.” That’s exactly what he tried to do in 2024. No more setup experiments from practice, just take the basic setup and follow a standard setup schedule in collaboration with Verstappen.
Initially, this worked. It wasn’t a fireworks display like last year’s start to the season, but Perez’s gap in qualifying was now consistently predictable. Before the start of the European season, he was always in Q3, in four out of seven attempts he was in the top three, despite stronger competition. Instead of massive pace fluctuations beyond four or five tenths, his gap settled predictably between three and four tenths.
How bad was Perez really in Monaco?
The first negative outlier came in Imola, when he got stuck in Q2, more than half a second behind Verstappen, and in the race, including a trip through the gravel trap, he only finished eighth. The Monaco failure was much worse. He finished Q1 in third last place, then had an accident in the first few meters of the race.
“His weekend was pretty brutal,” admitted Christian Horner afterwards. For the team, this is a much bigger cause for concern in 2024. This year’s car is no longer so dominant that Verstappen could win the team world championship single-handedly. In Monaco, the RB20 was more like third best behind Ferrari and McLaren. Although this was largely due to the characteristics of the track, Max Verstappen was quick to point out that there are specific weaknesses with the car that can no longer be concealed so well given the reduced gap.
This means that the constructors’ title will no longer be a sure thing against the strong competition, even if the car is still the best in the field on the majority of tracks. This is alarming for Horner: “We obviously have to make sure that we have both cars up there in the points. We cannot ignore the threat posed by Ferrari and McLaren in both championships.”
It should be noted that Perez’s Monaco performance looks to some extent worse than it actually was. He may have finished P18 in Q1, but was 0.349s behind Verstappen, who himself did not manage to get beyond P11. If you convert the gap into percentages to take the varying track lengths into account, the Monaco qualifying was only marginally worse than the Australian qualifying.
In Monaco, the Red Bull was simply not good. Verstappen, for example, already blamed his teammate for this to a certain extent on Saturday: “I’m not disappointed with my laps. Look where we are. P18 and P6. Normally Checo is very good on street circuits. Here he comes to life. That says it all.” In contrast, Japan was very positive. Actually one of those traditional circuits that Perez had so much trouble with last year. This year it was his best qualifying.
Is Perez showing nerves again under contract pressure?
What is certain is that Perez has an increasing need to conclude a contract extension with Red Bull soon. He has made that clear in recent weeks, and there are plenty of rumors about advanced negotiations. However, he does not want to hear about the fact that the resulting pressure played a role in the problems of the last two races.
“There is always pressure in Formula 1, whether you have a deal or not,” says Perez. “Red Bull in particular creates a high-pressure environment. So that doesn’t change anything. It can just be a bit stressful to negotiate when we have so much work on the weekend and when we have to go back to the simulator. But I think we’ll know sooner rather than later what I’m going to do next year.” Which in turn would mean that there was a lot going on for him off the track, especially on the sidelines of the disaster races in Imola and Monaco.
Things are much hairier internally at Alpine. Does Esteban Ocon have to sit out a race after the crash in Monaco? F1 expert Christian Danner thinks that’s a good idea in the new episode of ‘AvD Motorsport Magazine’: