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When the decisions are made and the dust settles on Red Bull's 2025 Formula 1 line-up deliberations, an inquest into the processes that led it there would certainly be a prudent undertaking.
How did it re-commit to a driver that it then decided it wasn't entirely sure about, even though everything but the most cursory glance at the headline results suggests he is the same driver he always was for Red Bull?
And if Sergio Perez does get moved on, how did it find itself in a position to only really pick between a driver it clearly doesn't fully believe in (Yuki Tsunoda), a driver it has more faith in but one who isn't actually beating that first driver (Daniel Ricciardo) and an honest-to-goodness rookie Hail Mary option (Liam Lawson).
Carlos Sainz, of course, would solve all of that. But hearing some of the tales about that 2015 Toro Rosso season and knowing that Verstappen and Sainz will inevitably butt heads again (even if it's Jos and Carlos Sr. doing so rather than Max and Carlos Jr.) at least makes a general Red Bull hesitance understandable.
But what if there was an option who could potentially approximate a Sainz-level production, who should be able to cover off Perez's biggest current weakness, who gets on well enough with Verstappen and who is starved enough for top-level F1 opportunity to accept the status Red Bull would impose on him?
Well... there was! Then Audi moved to snap him up.
If Nico Hulkenberg were a free agent right now, you'd think he would be very high on Red Bull's list of potential Perez fallbacks.
A pair of sixth-place finishes in the last two races have cast a sudden spotlight on the German, but the truth is that he has been delivering at a fairly consistent level since his return to F1 in 2023.
His rate of Q3 appearances had become something of a stick to beat Perez with, the numbers a bit too comparable in cars that emphatically are not. And in terms of a head-to-head duel against an established, known-quantity team-mate, Hulkenberg had been raising his stock in a way none of the other drivers in F1's midfield had been.
He is, at this point, having a better season than Tsunoda, a better season than Ricciardo, a better season than either of the Alpine drivers - and a better season than Valtteri Bottas and Alex Albon just by virtue of doing it against more proven intra-team opposition.
Red Bull had already flirted with the idea of picking him up for 2021 as the Albon replacement, though ultimately Perez won that battle handily. But, then again, of course he did - Perez was thriving in the "pink Mercedes" while Hulkenberg was on the sidelines, a bigger risk than Perez due to a lack of race fitness but not obviously a bigger reward (given their previous match-ups at Force India).
Perez worked out for Red Bull in '21, then increasingly less with every year, but this is not a question of re-litigating that decision. Rather, it is a question of whether Red Bull should already have known which way the wind was blowing in early 2024.
Hulkenberg's deal with Audi being made official coincided with the end of the 'good' part of Perez's season so far.
But Perez's recent downturn isn't really surprising to anyone, none of his struggles are particularly novel, and if Red Bull believed the start of this year proved those struggles were consigned to the past, it was shockingly naive. And if believed that they wouldn't matter because the RB20 would stay miles ahead of the opposition - well, that's less naive, maybe, but it's not a belief you want to fully build your driver strategy around.
At Force India, over their three years together, Perez was probably better on the whole than Hulkenberg. That's part of the widespread understanding (one that should never be overwritten by any of his Red Bull travails) that the Mexican has had such a great F1 career - more than holding his own against a driver who had had a much more fearsome reputation than Perez himself coming into grand prix racing.
But that was a different F1 - before the downforce hike, before the ground effect reset.
Hulkenberg looks closer now to that A1GP- and GP2-dominating monster than the fairly beige driver he was in F1's early hybrid years. But he does remain likely limited in ways that had prevented him from ever claiming a top F1 seat. He never looks like the most convincing driver over a race stint, he would probably never give you a tyre management victory and there are errors that still creep in in inopportune times.
Not unlike Perez, he seems stronger as the weekend progresses - take the recent Austria example, in which Kevin Magnussen was clearly the Haas driver to beat through the sprint sessions before Hulkenberg completely turned it around. But unlike Perez, or at least Red Bull-spec Perez, he is not a driver hamstrung by mixed conditions. You don't pencil Hulkenberg in for a Q1 exit when there's a bit of drizzle.
You never know until the first contact with the car - clearly a very, very particular car - but on paper this was the guy Red Bull should've got.
Given Hulkenberg is turning 37 next month, it would've worked as a one-contract thing with all parties understanding a continuation was highly unlikely but with Red Bull being given time to assess which of the Lawson/Isack Hadjar/Arvid Lindblad group is its next big hope - time it now suddenly feels like it doesn't have.
He would be a worse signing than Sainz, but clearly the baggage there weighs so heavily on the Red Bull decision-makers' minds. There's no such concern with Hulkenberg given his friendship with Verstappen - something that even helped Verstappen to pole at Imola earlier this year.
He would be a worse signing than someone like Lando Norris, but - aside from the fact Red Bull has been courting Norris to no avail - Norris would be too much of a disruptive presence (for a team with a preference for a clear hierarchy) through his youth, pace and all-rounder status.
Ultimately, the driver Red Bull wants is quick enough to be an asset but not actually quick enough or at least robust enough to pose a regular threat to Verstappen. And you can never estimate with too much confidence - but Hulkenberg feels like a great bet to tick both boxes.
There was a suggestion from Helmut Marko earlier this season, talking about Sainz, that Red Bull wasn't in a position to compete financially with offers made by Audi, it is nigh impossible to imagine a situation where Red Bull can't convince Hulkenberg to leave money on the table to sign for, say, two years with its team instead of three years with Audi/Sauber.
Now, though, that contract is long signed and surely impossible to get out of without jumping through crazy hoops, including those of an extremely punitive financial nature.
So it will not be anything more than 'what if?' - that ever-frequent idea of a team and driver who would've made all the sense in the world together had their timelines aligned just a tiny bit better.
