Much will be written in the coming weeks of what driver lineup the world champion Formula One team will field for 2025. Sergio Perez now in his fourth year with the team has for much of that time been under the cosh given his relative performance to Max Verstappen has been poor.
Yet despite extreme media speculation Red Bull Racing would ditch the Mexican driver this season, Christian Horner stood by Checo refusing to replace him with the eight time Grand Prix winner who used to partner Max successfully.
Perez survived the Max factor better than the rest
In fact Sergio has survive the ‘Max factor’ rather better than his predecessors. Pierre Gasly was promoted from Toro Rosso alongside Verstappen for the 2019 season, but was dumped back to the junior squad after the summer break, replaced by Alex Albon.
Albon too had just one full season to prove himself against the now three time world champion and was then fired by Red Bull and left without a drive for 2021. The Thai-British driver was replaced by Sergio Perez who is now the longest partner Verstappen has ever had eclipsing the three seasons Daniel Ricciardo race alongside the dutchman with some success.
Ricciardo has struggled to eclipse his junior and erratic Racing Bulls team mate Yuki Tsunoda having been brought back to replace another Red Bull driver casualty Nyck de Vries. The likeable Australian is 5-3 down in the count in the inter team battle for finishing positions in the eight GP events where they have raced together.
After another poor showing in Jeddah, Dr. Helmut Marko fired a shot across the bows of Ricciardo, stating “there’s a lot at stake this season for both Yuki (Tsunoda) and Daniel,” he told Speed Week.
Marko wants Ricciardo to ‘buck up’
Marko spoke positively about one aspect of the Japanese current driving form, but merely left a question mark hanging over Daniel’s future prospects with the team.
“Yuki’s qualifying performance was very good, but Ricciardo has to come up with something soon.”
Now another of the Red Bull stable of ex-drivers claims Max Verstappen cost him his career in the sport. Russian driver Daniil Kvyat was promoted to the big boy Red Bull team for the 2015 season having impressed driving for Toro Rosso the previous year.
He had the unenviable task of replacing Red Bull’s quadruple world champion driver Sebastian Vettel who had the call from Ferrari. He became the second youngest ever driver behind Vettel to score a podium when at 21 years, 912 days he scored a second place finish at the 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix
