If Red Bull makes the decision to cut ties with Sergio Perez for 2025, who are the main contenders to upgrade the Mexican driver?
Sergio Perez’s contract expires at the end of the 2024 season and, if Red Bull decides to upgrade him, who are the most likely names at the top of the list to replace Max Verstappen?
As it stands, Perez is doing what he wants to keep his seat in 2025. The Mexican finished behind Verstappen in the first two races and performed well in Australia until he received a grid penalty for blocking Nico Hulkenberg in Q1.
Unlike many races where he lost the lead to recover, Perez drove a calm and solid race to fifth, unable to make any progress due to a removable strip of Fernando Alonso stuck in the ground and robbing his car of downforce.
Helmut Marko said: “Sergio didn’t have a bad race, on the contrary”, Horner also said it was “too early in the year” to communicate about Red Bull’s second seat.
The symptoms are smart: Perez has mentally reset himself after his troubled 2023 and, if he manages to regain some consistency, there’s no explanation for Red Bull even thinking elsewhere, unless the time is approaching to find a successor to Verstappen. . . .
Carlos Sainz, the only one to have beaten Red Bull in a race since the end of 2022, found himself in Pôle Emploi looking for a new driver for 2025, an unfair situation for the Spaniard, given that he has been driving for 12 months.
But the guy Christian Horner has now jokingly referred to as Red Bull’s ‘nemesis’ is out of a job, but can the Spaniard be the main contender to upgrade Perez?
After all, there is little doubt about Sainz’s consistency or his ability to take control when needed.
It is worth remembering that Sainz already has a long history with Red Bull, having had their support in the ranks of the junior categories. But the political relationship between Carlos and Max’s respective fathers, as the two men raced in combination (equally!) at Toro Rosso in 2015, led to tensions.
Now that Sainz is an established favourite in his own right, how much fun would it be to see a rematch between Verstappen and Sainz at Red Bull’s main team?
Now that age firmly opposes him, despite his insistence that he has years left, Alonso still has what it takes in the short term to take wins and even a championship.
With his contract at Aston Martin ending at the same time as Perez’s at Red Bull, nothing – in theory – will stop Alonso from joining Red Bull, the Milton Keynes-based team wishing so.
But, unless Red Bull needs to annoy Verstappen with an engine that also likes to have a team around it, the Spaniard doesn’t make as much sense as Sainz or an internal promotion.
German media reports on Monday suggest that Christian Horner has his eyes set on Alonso for 2025, but other reports suggest that the same recommendations have been implemented through Alonso’s team on his behalf in a bid to boost his market value.
In the right cases, Alonso makes a lot of sense, but are those cases valid?It doesn’t seem so likely, not as long as Verstappen remains in place.
Given that Red Bull’s driver program has produced top-notch skills over the years, the apparent direction after Sergio Perez’s outside hire would be to take on a homegrown skill.
Having tried his luck since Alex Albon, the fact that Yuki Tsunoda is slowly emerging victorious from his internal war with Daniel Ricciardo will make him the leading contender, especially as the Japanese driver has enjoyed an unprecedented fourth year in the junior championship. team in which to hone your skills.
Tsunoda, by all accounts, was lucky to weather the winter, as Honda deserved to have given him his place to secure his seat, but Tsunoda justified this by saying that he was a transparent head regarding Ricciardo from the start of the season.
With all eyes on RB’s ‘shootout’ to see if any of them get the seat, Tsunoda, coming out of the war, will place him at the front of the queue, ahead of Ricciardo.
With Tsunoda’s seventh-place finish in Melbourne, propelling RB to sixth in the constructors’ championship, Tsunoda earned praise from Helmut Marko.
“On every lap he was competitive and didn’t do anything wrong, he’s calm,” Marko told Motorsport. com.
But he was reluctant to claim that Tsunoda would lead the standings if Perez was replaced: “As they say, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. Therefore, I wish for more before I could think in this direction. “
Liam Lawson wasn’t lucky not to get a seat for 2024 as he heavily inspired his five races with the former AlphaTauri team last year.
Although Lawson has the backing of Helmut Marko, who still says he wants more races to see what he’s capable of, the New Zealander remains a remote outsider for a race seat within the big team.
With no racing plans for 2024, Red Bull’s reserves have no chance of tipping the scales in his favour until he returns to a race car, and he’s much more likely to be with RB than the senior team.
It’s possible that Lawson will get his chance before the end of the season, that is, if Ricciardo’s suffering over the summer subsides (as Red Bull has done in the past with underperforming drivers), but there’s little chance he’ll do enough this year to be a realistic proposition for next year.
Unless Red Bull tries to build its long-term career with a prodigious skill that can succeed Verstappen, a signing similar to Perez’s may be a path the team will turn to again.
To that end, it makes sense to hire a solid driving force in midfield who can rack up points, maximise results and at the same time be a thorn in Max’s side – and who better for that role than Nico Hulkenberg?
Since his return to F1 last year, Hulkenberg has had an advantage over Kevin Magnussen and his talent demands a more competitive car. Given that he has worked on as many midfield groups as possible during his 10 years in F1, it’s a big round of applause to win them. Elusive podiums would be a very clever way for Hulkenberg to signal his race and probably give Red Bull the precise kind of reliability. Ask.
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