Christian Horner has revealed what Sergio Perez’s next move will be after Red Bull confirmed his exit following a disastrous 2024 F1 season.
The Mexican endured a torrid run of results this year as he finished eighth in the drivers’ standings – a mammoth 285 points behind teammate and champion Max Verstappen.
The 34-year-old’s sub-par performances ultimately cost Red Bull the constructors’ title as McLaren pipped Ferrari to the crown in the final race of the season, thanks to Lando Norris’s win in Abu Dhabi.
Red Bull extended Perez’s deal to the end of the 2025 season at the beginning of June but that ultimately meant little as they decided to cut bait with him, ending his run of 14 straight seasons on the F1 grid.
And Red Bull boss Horner has now explained what Perez will do ahead of the 2025 campaign, with no other seat lined up.
“Checo has been a fantastic member of this team, it’s been a tough year for him, but he’s a great person and played a key role in 2021 drivers’ championship,” Horner told Sky Sports.
“We sat down and discussed it last week. He’s decided to take a bit of time out, take a sabbatical from Formula 1 essentially. He’ll still be involved with the brand and the team. But he’s stepping back from driving duties moving forward.
“We’re sad to see him leave the team. It’s time for him to spend time with his family and reflect on what he wants to do for the future.”
Horner was inevitably asked whether he regretted the contract extension handed out over the summer that essentially marked the beginning of the veteran’s decline.
“At the time he’d had four podiums in five races, it was a logical extension to remove speculation, of which there was already too much around the team,” explained the team principal.
“Every contract has performance clauses and criteria, it didn’t make any difference to this decision for Sergio to step away and take a sabbatical.”
Horner did acknowledge that Red Bull probably should have won the constructors’ title given Verstappen’s dominance and that the gap between him and Perez proved crucial.
“Look, I think… shoulda, coulda… would have,” said Horner. “In hindsight, McLaren did a great job. But at the end of the day, we won more races, we had more poles, we won four sprint races, more than any other team, and we won the drivers’ championship with two races to go.
“Unfortunately we had a 280-point deficit between our drivers, of course that became quite expensive in terms of the constructors’ championship.”
Attention will now turn to Perez’s replacement to partner Verstappen next season with the decision seemingly being a straight shootout between Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson – both of whom currently drive for Red Bull’s feeder team RB.
Carlos Sainz was also on the market at one stage, after Lewis Hamilton was confirmed to be replacing him at Ferrari, but Horner dismissed the notion that his team should have moved for the Spaniard before Williams pounced.
“Look, Carlos is a great driver, we’ve seen that,” admitted Horner. “But you have to look at all the various criteria and dynamics, at the point of Checo’s new contract, he was second in the championship and finishing on podiums in four of the first five races.
“Now, we have all of the information we need, it’ll be a choice between Yuki and Liam and both have got strong credentials. We tested Yuki recently in Abu Dhabi, had a chance to work with the engineer team, while Liam has tested a lot with us and driven well. Considering all of that. We’ll conclude in the coming days.
“The most important thing for us, to make sure we have two drivers performing as closely as possible. We’ll have a Hamilton and Leclerc line-up [at Ferrari], Norris and Piastri [at McLaren], we’ve seen what that’s capable of, George Russell with another newcomer in Kimi Antonelli [at Mercedes] – it’ll be very tight next year. What is the best line-up we can field?”
