Red Bull decided not to sack Sergio Perez midway through the Formula 1 2024 season because they did not want to risk unsettling Max Verstappen.
Perez’s future has been under intense scrutiny after failing to win a race and securing only four podium finishes this season – all of which came in the first five races. He is currently seventh in the F1 Driver’s standings with 131 points – less than half of what Verstappen amassed with 277 so far this season.
The tipping point came when Perez started second on the grid at Spa for the Belgian Grand Prix, with Verstappen back in 11th – and the 34-year-old ended up finishing behind his team-mate based on performance alone.
Shortly after, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko held showdown talks in London to discuss his future before deciding to keep him in the seat.
But while there is a clear acceptance that Perez isn’t performing well enough to make Verstappen feel uncomfortable, F1 journalist Brandon Sutton – speaking on the Total Motorsport F1 show – has explained why the Austrian team decided to keep him for the foreseeable future.
“He’s definitely not a threat to Verstappen and that’s going to help Red Bull a lot in trying to stay ahead of Lando Norris in the title fight, but there are actually reasons for Perez to stay, the main reason is the constructors’ championship,” Sutton said.
“Realistically, if you throw another driver into a Red Bull that clearly has issues, you’re throwing someone like [Yuki] Tsunoda in who’s never really sat in a Red Bull and [Daniel] Ricciardo, do we even know if he’s the same driver he was in 2020 anymore after what Norris did to him?
