Sergio Perez believes Red Bull regrets dropping him at the end of 2024, with the Formula 1 team already on its second replacement driver this season.
Red Bull decided to replace Perez with its junior driver Liam Lawson for 2025, only to then swap Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda after just two point-less races at the start of the year.
Since then, Tsunoda has been more competitive than Lawson was in his fleeting Red Bull stint, but the results have still been poor.
Perez commented on Red Bull’s situation in a rare media appearance joining Desde el Paddock, a Spanish language podcast hosted by three-time Daytona 24 Hours winner Memo Rojas.
And while he said he does not feel he is owed an apology by Red Bull, he believes the team made “certain decisions because of the immense pressure—pressure that they themselves helped create”.
Team ‘regrets’ dropping him
Perez was axed because his form nosedived after a strong start to 2024 and he suffered a lot more than Max Verstappen as Red Bull’s car became less competitive.
But his run of 45 points from 16 races after signing a new two-year extension, which should have kept Perez at the team until the end of 2026, was still well beyond what Tsunoda has threatened - scoring just seven points from eight races at Red Bull so far.
“I know, deep down, they regret it,” said Perez. “And I know that from a very reliable source.
“Still, what can you do? You move on.
“It’s tough. I have very good friends there, and people might think I take pleasure in what happened, but no.”
Perez had already warned Red Bull last year that a younger, inexperienced driver would struggle with the way its car had been developed.
He is the only Verstappen team-mate to win a race since Daniel Ricciardo in 2018, as Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon had short-lived stints at Red Bull before Perez’s arrival.
Perez said that “Max deserves all the success he’s having” but that Red Bull “slowly fell apart” - and despite the team’s claims to the contrary, pointed to a clear defining moment: “When Adrian [Newey] left, that’s when the problems really started.”
Red Bull didn’t ‘protect’ him
Perez said that Red Bull had such a “direct and clear path for how to evolve the car” that he felt it had the same unique demands in 2021, his first year with the team, as in 2022 and beyond with very different ground-effect technical regulations.
Not for the first time, Perez pointed to an upgrade at the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix as his downfall, which he said made the car “unmanageable” when there was a variable like wind or rain.
“I had to drive the Red Bull with full conscious effort,” he said. “When the car’s development took that direction, even Max and I told them about it, they still went that way. And it just became harder and harder.”
Though Perez rallied from his in-season 2023 dip and gave Red Bull its first ever drivers’ championship one-two finish, he could not save himself in 2024.
He feels Red Bull contributed to his problems and then did not do enough to help him, or his side of the garage, and suggested he was hamstrung because Red Bull knows “how the press works in Formula 1, how it’s controlled - don’t comment, don’t speak out”.
“After I signed my contract in Monaco, from the very next race, everyone was talking about my future, even though I already had a signed contract,” he said.
“It would have been so easy for the team to protect me and simply say: ‘We have a driver under contract for the next two years.’ But they didn’t.
“So no one was talking about anything else at Red Bull. Every week it was just about me, race to race.”
“That created a lot of pressure on my side of the garage, and that pressure trickled down to the engineers and everyone involved. In the end, that cost us a lot. And yes, I believe it was a fundamental issue.”
Needing him to paying him off
Perez said he still reflects fondly on his time at Red Bull, even though there were signs early on about what he was walking into.
He said on his first meeting with team boss Christian Horner, he was told Red Bull “runs two cars because we have to” and “we’d be happy just racing with Max”.
In response, Perez - who said that’s when he started to understand how Red Bull worked - said: “Well, now you can run with two cars - hire me.”
However, Perez said that the way the team was set up made life difficult from the start, as he was going up against Verstappen while learning a new organisation and with a race engineering team that was also filled with people in new roles - “zero experience”, in Perez’s words.
The capabilities and experience of his race engineering team became a significant factor in Perez’s final season, and in criticism of Red Bull levied by some of his fans.
“Instead of complaining about them or saying I needed more experienced people, I told myself: ‘This is what I have, so I’m going to focus on it’,” he said.
Perez said outqualifying Verstappen in only his second race at Imola, and winning his sixth in Baku, meant he saw “a good future” with Red Bull.
“I ended up staying for six years, it was incredible,” he said. When it was then put to him it was four years, Perez laughed: “Well, I charged them for six!”
2026 return ‘going well’
Perez is keen to return to the F1 grid and his new representatives - after splitting with long-time manager Julien Jakobi at the end of last year - have been actively having discussions with at least two teams.
The new Cadillac entry is the primary target, although there has at least been some communication with Alpine as the Renault team works out its driver plans.
So far, Cadillac has not made a final decision on either of its two seats, with Perez on a shortlist known to include Valtteri Bottas, Mick Schumacher and Zhou Guanyu.
Bottas teased a possible Cadillac drive with a light-hearted social media video this week but that is understood to be no precursor to an announcement, with the team still in no rush to finalise plans as the market is so settled and its options are fixed.
Talks are expected to continue at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone with representatives of Bottas and Perez.
“Things are going well, but I think it’s still early in the season,” Perez said.
Do we like this seat? pic.twitter.com/DhUuCdpGcB
— Valtteri Bottas (@ValtteriBottas) June 23, 2025
“As time goes on, things will become clearer, and I’ll be able to make a final decision.
“I’m not in a rush. I know I won’t be in Formula 1 this year, so we’ll see what happens for next year.”
