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Max Verstappen has expressed his sympathy for Sergio Perez ahead of his Red Bull team-mate’s likely departure after the 2024 Formula 1 season finale.
Perez is in final discussions with Red Bull over the terms of his exit from the team he has been with for the last four seasons.
He played a crucial role in Verstappen’s first world championship in 2021 and just last year completed Red Bull’s first drivers’ championship one-two.
But Perez has toiled in 2024 after a strong start. He scored four podiums in the first five races but has not been in the top three since, and his form going into freefall has cost Red Bull the constructors’ title.
That has led to Red Bull’s current predicament: working out how to replace Perez despite Perez having a contract until the end of 2026. Perez has effectively admitted that working out how to end this early will be the subject of discussions this week and he is understood to be aware his Red Bull career is over.
Though Perez’s exit is widely felt to have been inevitable given his form, he has an ally in his four-time world champion team-mate. Verstappen says he has “always worked really well with Checo”, who he described as “a great guy”.
“Honestly, it’s very rare that you have a team-mate like him,” Verstappen said.
“He's always been very good and just a nice guy too.”
It is no secret that Red Bull’s development hit a rough patch in 2024 and Verstappen was a vocal critic of the car’s limitations and the team’s failed upgrades at times.
Asked by The Race if Perez suffered because of some of the issues Red Bull encountered this year, Verstappen replied: “100%.” And when The Race asked if that meant he had sympathy for him, Verstappen said: “I do.
“I work with him every weekend and week in, week out. I find people have been very harsh on him.
“Of course, some weekends maybe could have been better, naturally, but sometimes people have been very harsh on him, because he's not an idiot.
“He's always been regarded as a great driver, and it's been tough.
“But it's been tough for everyone in the team, because sometimes it [the RB20] was just very difficult to drive.”
Given how much Verstappen has complained about the Red Bull, this is not merely lip service to Perez.
In fact, Verstappen remains concerned about Red Bull’s performance trajectory, saying of 2025 that he only ‘hopes’ to be in the title fight “but we have a lot of work to do, for sure”.
For that reason, Perez cannot only be judged on a slump from start-to-finish in 2024, nor a comparison to 2023. Verstappen’s numbers are also, obviously, down from last year. And the fact there have been times they have both reported similar limitations means there is obviously an element of Perez simply not being able to work around the problems like Verstappen can.
But that doesn’t explain the extent of the gaps, or the disappointments. There have been far too many Q1 exits and weak points returns in a car that has kept fighting for podiums and wins in Verstappen’s hands. Perez was almost dropped in the summer break but was handed a reprieve – which has turned out to be futile.
Since the break, Perez has managed a best finish of seventh. He has scored 21 points - fewer than Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, the same as Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, and only two more than Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg.
“Obviously the benchmark is always your team-mate and the car has won nine races with Max at the wheel, it's had 10 poles, I forget how many but a significant amount of podiums and fastest laps,” said team principal Christian Horner when asked by The Race how much responsibility Red Bull takes for Perez’s struggles, or whether Verstappen’s performance showed that it's on Perez’s side.
“It's been far from the easiest car and Max is the hardest team-mate in the world to have.
“It's a difficult, difficult job to sit next to Max, to extract the maximum out of the car.
“And for sure, RB20 has been one of the more challenging cars that we've produced, its operational window of extracting the maximum performance has been very, very narrow.
“That's something that will be working to broaden next year.”
It may be that Perez has simply been exposed by the extent of the competition. He is not as fast as Verstappen, he is not as comfortable in the car, and when things get really bad he is devoid of confidence or overdrives.
Abu Dhabi wasn’t terrible by Perez’s recent standards, as he was three or four tenths of a second slower than Verstappen at his best, but it still left him 10th on the grid.
That is too far adrift when the competition is this fierce and is why, for all Perez’s past contributions to Red Bull and the positive feedback he earns from the likes of Verstappen, Red Bull has decided the time has come for change. A 77-point gap to McLaren, when Verstappen won the drivers' contest by 63 points, is too big to accept.
“You can see that the importance of having two drivers scoring on a regular and collective basis in the constructors' championship is crucial,” said Horner.
“Ferrari will be strong with their line-up next year. McLaren have a strong line-up. Mercedes will have an inexperienced driver in one of their seats.
“And so for us, it's very important that both of our drivers are delivering, and there's not a significant gap.”
