Sergio Perez with his visor raised, sitting in his Red Bull RB20
With Max Verstappen taking a 10-place grid penalty at the Belgian Grand Prix, Sergio Perez has been warned if he isn’t ahead of his Red Bull team-mate on the grid it is “curtains”.
Perez is gearing up for what could be his final qualifying session ever as a Red Bull driver, a shocking situation given just two months ago he was handed a new two-year contract.
Never mind the Belgian GP race, qualifying could decide Sergio Perez’s Red Bull future
But failing to perform in the ensuing races, he’s gone from being a driver who is confident in his future to one who may not even see out the season.
PlanetF1.com understands a clause in Perez’s contract allowed Red Bull to demote him to VCARB or even drop him entirely from their line-up if he’s 100 points behind Verstappen at the summer break.
Today, with a maximum of 26 points in place at Spa, he’s 141 points behind and therefore cannot reach that safety zone.
And even if the math said he could, his pace in Friday’s practice wasn’t encouraging with Perez over a second down on Verstappen after FP2.
It was a session that was topped by a McLaren 1-2 and it’s that pressure from the Woking team, who have two drivers scoring points and even winning races, that has put pressure on Red Bull to axe the Mexican driver.
F1 journalist Buxton reckons the decision could be made as early as Saturday if Perez finds himself behind Verstappen on the Belgian GP grid given the triple World Champion has a 10-place grid penalty.
Speaking on the BBC Sport’s Chequered Flag podcast, he said: “Max takes a 10-place grid penalty, Perez has to get the job done. He’s under massive pressure right now because Red Bull’s operating a one-car team.
“Imagine a scenario where Checo doesn’t out-qualify Max even with Max’s 10-place grid penalty. It’s curtains!”
Sergio Perez’s deficit to Max Verstappen laid bare
Perez finished Friday’s running in seventh place, Verstappen P3, and the gap between the team-mates 1.027s.
Perez later told the media including PlanetF1.com that the cars were “quite different” during the practice sessions, adding: “We’ve been playing around.
“We’ve been doing some stuff with it and we just haven’t been able to fully extract everything out of it, so some bits [to improve].”
But with the driver complaining during the sessions that at “all speeds, low speed and medium” he did “not have the feeling of what’s going on”, Sky Sports Ted Kravitz declared: “That’s not positive.”
His fellow pundit Karun Chandhok replied: “That’s what it looked like. He was so tentative with the wheel trying to turn in.”
Red Bull will sit down during the summer break to discuss their driver situation with Liam Lawson and Daniel Ricciardo the favourites to replace Perez at the Dutch Grand Prix. Should Ricciardo take the seat, Lawson will then be jettisoned in at VCARB alongside Yuki Tsunoda.
