Red Bull ‘explanation’ for not dropping Sergio Perez after summer break revealed

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Red Bull’s decision to retain Sergio Perez was surprising after his tumultuous form heading into the Formula 1 summer break.

The Mexican’s performance at the Belgian Grand Prix cast doubt on whether Red Bull would continue with him heading into the second half of the season.

Team advisor Helmut Marko provided a damning conclusion to Perez’s performance, claiming he “completely collapsed” during his run from second on the grid to seventh.

Red Bull management ran crunch talks over what they would do with Sergio Perez, with a possible scenario of Daniel Ricciardo replacing him until the end of the season.

Team principal Christian Horner elected to keep the Mexican onboard, with Marko also going on to explain that Perez brought continuity to the team.

Discussing the main reason why Red Bull decided to keep Perez, journalist Erik van Haren reveals the main ‘explanation’ why they did not replace him with another driver from their stable on the F1 Nation podcast.

Why Red Bull did not replace Sergio Perez

The possibility of Ricciardo or Liam Lawson replacing Perez was thrown up as a contingency plan for Red Bull after it was clear that the Mexican was costing them too many points in the Constructors’ Championship battle.

McLaren is now 42 points behind heading into the final 10 races and with the consistency of both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, they are expected to surpass the defending world champions.

According to Van Haren, Red Bull had a lot of doubts about replacing Perez during a pivotal moment of the season.

“I was quite surprised they go along with him for the rest of the year, but I think the explanation is that there is not a guaranteed good replacement,” said Van Haren.

“Someone will be doing it better than him, with Ricciardo and Lawson, that there are too many doubts about it in the team.”

Red Bull faces development war with McLaren

Now the RB20 is no longer the fastest car on the grid, the team is having to retrace its steps to find extra performance on track after the Red Bull engineers ‘overstepped the mark’ with their aggressive car upgrades.

This is also partially why they kept Perez on board, knowing that any downgrade back to the car that enabled him to finish second in three of the first four races could see a return of confidence for the Mexican.

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Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache was not overly confident this approach would help Perez, but the team is exploring every option to ensure he is back up to speed.

But if he does not improve his form in the next few races, which include circuits he has strong finishes at previously like Azerbaijan and Singapore, Perez could still face the axe during the break in mid-October.

Ricciardo is the most likely replacement in this case, although he has not shown he would make much of a difference in the Visa CashApp RB this year.