During one of his latest podcast appearances, the former team principal of Haas, Guenther Steiner, discussed Sergio Perez's and Red Bull's situation ahead of the 2025 season.
Coming into the 2024 season, it was unimaginable for most F1 fans that Red Bull would prolong Perez's contract even for 2025. For a while, it seemed like the team might even terminate his current contract before its due date.
The 34-year-old didn't disappoint and delivered a few decent results in the opening races, such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.
However, the Mexican's performances have been in a slump recently. In the last three races, he scored 16 points together, with one P4, one P8, and one DNF (in Monaco).
Currently, Perez stands fourth in the Drivers' Championship, and if his performance doesn't improve, Red Bull will not be able to secure the Constructors' Championship this year. Their lead over Ferrari in second place is 24 points ahead of next week's Canadian Grand Prix.
Despite being threatened in the Championship, rumors suggest the Austrian team is satisfied enough with the Mexican's performance to offer him the seat for 2025 as well. Assessing Checo's performance, Steiner told The Red Flags Podcast:
"As a team, if you take the points Checo compared to his team-mate percentage-wise and you compare the other two teams, as teams they're better set up with the drivers. Obviously, Checo is not a bad driver, the others are just closer together."
In the past, Red Bull was known to be a team with very little patience with underperforming drivers. Why is it that they keep the 34-year-old then? Steiner continued:
"It's one of those questions I ask myself sometimes. It's like why don't you give another guy a chance, you know?"
"I mean, Tsunoda is doing a fantastic job, I think, in the RB team; he's doing a fantastic job there. Now it looks like Perez is renewed for next year, but you've got options out there like Sainz."
"Albon was out there, but now, obviously, he's not out there because he signed for Williams. But it's one of those things… I don't really know."
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