Sergio Perez’s final 10 words on the Red Bull team radio before losing his seat to Liam Lawson

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Sergio Perez has officially lost his Red Bull seat, the team confirmed on Wednesday. Liam Lawson is expected to replace him for the 2025 season.

Perez’s exit came to look like an inevitability as his form grew progressively worse. He hardly offered the team any cause for optimism after the early rounds of the season, and Red Bull have confirmed Perez’s sacking now.

After he finished fourth at the Miami GP in May, Perez was second in the championship on 101 points, 35 behind leader Max Verstappen. He would only score 51 in the remaining 18 races (including four Sprint weekends), falling down to eighth in the standings.

That sequence would include only one top-six finish coming at the Dutch Grand Prix. He crashed out of three races, most notably the Azerbaijan GP, where he was on for a podium finish after outqualifying Verstappen for the first and only time this season.

He’d barely scored points in half of the last 18 rounds (10) and suffered five DNFs overall. Perez would also end the season, and potentially his F1 career, with back-to-back retirements.

It ultimately has to rank as one of the poorest campaigns for a driver at a top team in recent F1 history. Indeed, Perez matched Jos Verstappen’s unwanted record from 1994 by finishing eighth or lower in a title-winning car.

Sergio Perez’s reaction to Red Bull failure at Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was telling

Perez made it to Q3 at the season-ending Abu Dhabi GP, which was far from a given this year. In fact, he failed to reach the top 10 shoot-out in nine out of 24 races.

However, P10 was still an underwhelming result, particularly given that two big names in Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were already out. Perez lapped slower than Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and, most embarrassingly of all, Sauber’s point-less Valtteri Bottas.

On the very first lap, Perez made contact with Bottas at the turn six and seven chicane and spun. While he initially got going again, he had to pull over in the final sector, leading to a virtual safety car.

Speaking on the team radio, he said: “Argh, I lost drive. I lost drive. Yep, engine off.”

It was telling that Perez didn’t sound especially upset. Instead, there was an air of resignation in his voice, almost as if he was numb in the face of repeated setbacks.

The problem Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton both had in common in 2024

Guenther Steiner has told Perez to ‘settle down’ after losing his Red Bull drive. Rather than rushing into another discipline, he should take time to consider his options.

Perez could be a factor in the 2026 driver market, though his stock has been significantly damaged. Cadillac will become F1’s 11th team, and the sport’s most popular North American driver may carry some appeal, particularly given his track record of leading midfield teams.

He’s one of a number of veteran drivers to struggle with the current generation of cars. Daniel Ricciardo lost his seat midway through the season, while Valtteri Bottas and Kevin Magnussen both missed out on new deals.

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton also experienced the same issue as Perez. Both have found the ground-effect cars difficult to manoeuvre under braking compared to previous iterations.