Mark Hughes: The dramatic rise and fall of Sergio Perez's F1 career
Sat 21, Dec, 2024
Source: The Race
It looks like that's it for Sergio Perez's Formula 1 career after 14 years. During that time he has scored six grand prix victories - which is not to be sniffed at - and finished runner-up in the 2023 drivers' world championship.
There's probably a recency bias in the perception of him as the man destroyed by Max Verstappen's brilliance. It's easy to forget amid his difficulties in the Red Bull that there have been days when Perez has delivered truly formidable world-class performances in his four years with the team, none more so than in Singapore in 2022 when he was absolutely masterful in containing Charles Leclerc's Ferrari to win what was a very tricky race.
As recently as last season, he outperformed Verstappen to win in Baku, withstanding immense pressure from him along the way.
But it's been quite an unusual F1 career. He was a decade into it by the time he won his first race - in the 'pink Mercedes' for Racing Point at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix. This was the culmination of seven straight seasons for the team formerly known as Force India.
It was during this time that he made his reputation as a super-solid points-harnessing machine, a role which was perfectly suited to the sometimes-challenging financial situation of the team for much of that period. He was the bedrock upon which the team's famed 'bang for buck' results - the team finished fourth in the 2016 and 2017 constructors' championship - were based.
He entered F1 in 2011 as a Ferrari Academy driver placed at Sauber. He was paired there with Kamui Kobayashi. 'Checo' would later say the Japanese driver taught him a lot about how to get the best from the tyres. The team's performance engineer was an ex-Michelin guy called Pierre Wache (now Red Bull's technical director) and that too informed Perez's understanding.
Perez's easy way with the tyres would go on to become a key strength of his game. His qualifying pace was rarely spectacular. He was quite closely matched to Kobayashi, but notably good in Monaco and Singapore; street circuits were already something of a speciality from his junior career days.
Even then, he was noted as being a faster race day driver than qualifier. So these career traits - quick on street tracks, great with rear tyres, not a super-quick qualifier - were all already in place.
Still on the Ferrari Academy for 2012, he stayed with Sauber which produced a car - the C31 - that was super-easy on the tyres. With the very difficult Pirellis of that year, it occasionally allowed for some spectacular race-pace offsets and Perez's skillset was perfect for taking full advantage of those days.
His thrilling chase of Alonso's Ferrari in Malaysia, finishing a strong second, was a case in point. Another starring drive in Montreal was also rewarded with a podium, see also a second-place finish at Monza behind Lewis Hamilton after overtaking both Ferraris on track.
The C31 was a very good car on the tyres but Perez was very good with them too, so it was an occasionally sparkling combination. Again, he was no quicker than Kobayashi but his three starring peaks were impressive. He’d also by this time gained a reputation for being very uncompromising in defence, a very tough guy to go wheel-to-wheel with.
For 2013 he was signed by McLaren as Hamilton's replacement (which effectively brought his Ferrari link to an end) and paired with Jenson Button. It didn't work out. It wasn't a great car but he was completely eclipsed by Button. Released at the end of the season, Perez was replaced by Kevin Magnussen.
This was the moment of revelation, really, as to what Perez's F1 career trajectory would be; middling rather than stellar. He fell off the radar of the big teams at this point. This set him up for his Force India role.
He served seven years at Force India/Racing Point from 2014-20, and his ability to grind out the points was gold dust. He was also capable of springing a surprise big result when there was a good tyre day - and like at Sauber in 2012 this was a mid-grid team with an occasional tyre ace in its pocket: ex-Bridgestone engineer Jun Matsuzaki, another guy Perez would work very productively with.
There were several over-deliveries on street tracks again, notably at Baku where he qualified a great second-fastest in 2016, the foundation to a third-place finish, a result he repeated two years later. Unlike his sometime team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, he could conjure podiums when the tyre equation opened that window.
Hulkenberg was initially quicker and more successful, but into year two and three (2015 and 2016) Perez outscored him and his gentler style generally got more from the circumstances than the more aggressive Hulkenberg.
Esteban Ocon joined Force India for 2017 and the almost-rookie was initially faster than Perez, but by the end of the year and through 2018 they were actually remarkably equal. But with Ocon just as uncompromising as Perez in battle, there were a few ill-natured scrapes between them, notably in Baku and at Spa in 2017.
As the team fell into receivership part-way through 2018, Perez was instrumental in rescuing it, his claim protecting it from more hostile creditors to wind the team up. This action in turn facilitated its purchase by Lawrence Stroll. So it was somewhat cruel that less than two years later Perez lost his long-time drive as Stroll recruited Sebastian Vettel for 2021.
That turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Perez, putting him on the market at just the moment Red Bull was looking for a reliable, experienced, points gatherer to partner Max Verstappen: good enough to take points off rivals and compromise their strategies, to be there ready to win if Verstappen had a problem. Neither of the previous juniors Alex Albon or Pierre Gasly had been able to regularly perform this function.
Perez - who had enjoyed a strong final season in the 'pink Mercedes' of 2020 including that great last-to-first Sakhir victory - joined Red Bull in the belief that he would be able to compete with Verstappen, regardless of the support role he'd been hired for.
Ultimately, he couldn't, of course. But initially he did perform well in the role he'd been hired to do and was an important part of Verstappen's 2021 title bid. At his happy hunting ground of Baku he scored his first victory for the team, there ready as back-up as Verstappen retired from the lead with an exploding tyre.
His qualifying deficit to Verstappen was significant at just under 0.5s as he got to see for perhaps the first time in his career what the difference was between his own level and that of an F1 megastar. He was taken aback at how Verstappen could live with a super-nervous rear and aid it to rotate the car way faster than Perez could live with.
But he's a tough, mentally resilient, character and he'd vowed to come back stronger for 2022. At the beginning of the season, before the excess weight came off it, the RB18 was an understeerer. So Verstappen hated it and Perez liked it.
Suddenly, the gap between them was much smaller than in 2021 and Perez - in what was F1's fastest car, regardless of its extra few kilograms - began to have ideas of a title campaign. He'd been on-course to win in Jeddah, having set a resounding pole there, before a safety car appeared at just the wrong time for him.
In hindsight, this was the strongest phase of his Red Bull career but in stepping out of his support role, he made himself unpopular in the Verstappen camp. Especially when they suspected him of deliberately crashing in Monaco qualifying in order to prevent Max from beating his time. But it won him that race, just as he'd signed a two-year extension to his deal.
From the very next race, the Red Bull's updates had made it a much more Verstappen-like car - and Perez was left as far behind as he'd been in 2021. But in Singapore that pattern was broken as he delivered probably the best win of his career.
With Verstappen sidelined in qualifying by a fuelling error, the team's prospects hung on Perez's shoulders, as he'd qualified second to Leclerc's Ferrari in the damp session.
After winning the start, he held off Leclerc's repeated attacks through a tricky opening stint on intermediates, opened out a gap over the Ferrari to pit and rejoin still ahead. He controlled Leclerc at the various VSC and safety car restarts and finally pulled clear as a Leclerc moment lost him DRS.
It was a world-class performance but way beyond his usual level.
Perez's 2023 season followed a remarkably similar pattern to that of 2022, but with an even more dominant Red Bull; fairly competitive with Verstappen in the early races, but falling way behind as the car developed to a place where Verstappen could squeeze a lot more from it.
In that early-season phase he took the Jeddah victory he was denied in 2022, before then taking Verstappen on and beating him fair and square at Checo's special venue of Baku. An irritated Verstappen was reported by his father Jos as saying, "He's not going to do that to me again." And he didn't.
At Miami a couple of weeks later, even starting from three rows behind Perez's pole (on account of a spin in Q3), Verstappen was able to hunt him down, pass him and leave him far behind. That was the last time we saw a competitive Perez.
His subsequent sequence of failures to make Q3 (or sometimes even Q2) as Verstappen dominated from the front led to questions about how Red Bull would be placed if Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren - all with two super-quick and competitive drivers - ever made competitive cars.
For the second time in Perez's tenure there, Red Bull made serious attempts at convincing Lando Norris to join as his replacement. Norris turned them down again and the fears about the other teams catching up finally came true in 2024.
Perez was found wanting. Further off Verstappen's pace than ever before, he was the reason Red Bull was badly beaten to third in the constructors' championship. Which was a costly outcome.
Perez has had a proud career as a multiple grand prix winner, a tough and tenacious competitor and has electrified F1's following in his home country of Mexico. On his good days he was capable of taking on anyone - and if all races in the calendar were held around Baku, he would surely be considered one of the greats.
But in the intensity of a close multi-team fight at the front, he wasn't quite able to justify his place at the top table.