What Red Bull said before sacking Pierre Gasly in 2019 that should worry Sergio Perez

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Red Bull have decided to retain Sergio Perez beyond the 2024 summer break, it emerged on Monday. Perez has survived for the moment despite a woeful run of form in the lead-up to the shutdown.

Perez only signed a new contract last month, but Red Bull included break clauses in case his form spiralled. They had the option to axe him in August because he was more than 100 points behind teammate Max Verstappen (146).

It would have cost Red Bull £3.8m to pay Perez off, but that’s around half the price of losing out to McLaren in the constructors’ championship. The Woking outfit have been able to narrow the gap to 42 points thanks to the Mexican’s struggles.

Since his P4 finish in Miami – the last result that would have truly satisfied Red Bull – Perez has scored just 28 points in eight races, including a Sprint weekend in Austria. For reference, Verstappen bagged 33 in China alone when he won the Sprint and the main Grand Prix.

There was a degree of surprise that he survived this sequence. Red Bull have developed a ruthless reputation but have taken a risk by exercising patience here.

Christian Horner is backing Perez to improve immediately after the break. The upcoming run of races includes the Azerbaijan GP, where he’s claimed two of his six F1 wins to date.

Red Bull vowed to keep Pierre Gasly in 2019

In 2016, Red Bull demoted Daniil Kvyat after just four races and called up Verstappen from Toro Rosso. And three years later, Pierre Gasly suffered the same fate, with Alex Albon the beneficiary.

Gasly lasted until the summer break, at which point he’d fallen 118 points behind Verstappen. While that’s smaller than the current gap to Perez, it’s worth stressing that the RB15 wasn’t a dominant car.

Perez has scored 32.1% of his team’s points this year, while Gasly was responsible for 25.8% in 2019. But the Frenchman seemingly received assurances that he’d get to see out the season.

At the start of July, Horner clarified (F1) that there was ‘no intention’ to make an abrupt change to the driver line-up. Instead, Red Bull wanted to ‘work with’ Gasly to extract his highest level of performance.

“There is no intention to change Pierre,” he said. “He’s our driver, we’re going to work with him, we will try to get the best out of him.”

At the end of the month, Helmut Marko was even more emphatic: “This year we won’t change,” he told Motorsport.com. “We will end the season as we currently are.”

Just one race later, they dispensed with Gasly. These statements will surely worry Perez, because they demonstrate how quickly things can change in F1 and at Red Bull in particular.

How Liberty Media influenced Red Bull decision to keep Sergio Perez

Perez looked to have hurt his case at Spa last weekend, dropping from an encouraging P2 on the grid down to P8 on race day. But some external assistance might have saved him.

Verstappen appeared to support Perez in his media duties, attributing Red Bull’s problems to the car rather than one driver. These remarks may have shaped the team’s thinking.

Meanwhile, F1 owners Liberty Media applied pressure on Red Bull. They were concerned about ‘a huge drop’ in revenue ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix in October.

It remains to be seen whether this is enough for Perez to survive another weak stretch of races after the summer break. The 34-year-old boasts an array of valuable commercial ties in Latin America, which could also help him secure a seat elsewhere if necessary.