2024 F1 mid-season driver rankings #19: Sergio Perez · RaceFans

At the end of last season, RaceFans’ decision to place Sergio Perez as the 20th ranked driver out of 22 in 2023 – ahead only of Nyck de Vries and Logan Sargeant – was not one taken lightly.

It reflected the inconsistency, the underachieving and the errors that the veteran driver made in what may well be one of the greatest Formula 1 cars of all time – and the most statistically dominant F1 car ever built.

Just over halfway through 2024, Perez has secured a contract extension keeping him with the world champions into 2025 and, potentially, beyond. Surely, that means the 34-year-old has turned a corner? Right?

Sadly, if anything, Perez has only become more of a liability for Red Bull than he was last year. After 14 rounds, he sits only seventh in the championship. He has only 47.29% of his team mate’s points total – lower than his proportion at the end of last season. Out of the top four teams, George Russell is the only driver behind him in the standings – and would have been ahead had if he had not been disqualified from Spa.

After the Chinese Grand Prix, Perez sat second in the standings after a solid start to the season, followed by an unremarkable Miami weekend. But then, he endured a six round run that was worse than any driver in the field all season.

It started with crashing in final practice at Imola, then being eliminated in Q2, before finishing eighth in the race after a trip through the gravel midrace. Then he was knocked out of Q1 in Monaco before being caught up in a frightening opening lap crash.

Immediately after celebrating his new contract extension, his Canadian Grand Prix weekend was woeful. He failed to get out of Q1 – again – clashed with Pierre Gasly at the start, then was overtaken by him, before spinning into what would eventually be retirement at turn six, causing heavy rear damage to the car. A grid penalty affected him in Spain but he was still a minute behind his race-winning team mate in eighth, then was just pure slow compared to team mate Max Verstappen and was never higher than seventh in any session.

Incredibly, the problems continued into Silverstone. While Verstappen was hunting down Lewis Hamilton for the win, Perez was two laps down in 17th after spinning out of Q1, prompting Red Bull to gamble on intermediate tyres, a strategy that did not pay off. As the pressure was mounting approaching the summer break, Perez then made yet another mistake in qualifying in Hungary, crashing out of Q1 on the damp track, forcing him to fight to recover to a respectable seventh place.

Aside from Suzuka, easily his best weekend of the season, Perez’s performances in 2024 so far have hovered between ‘average’ and ‘poor’. It’s telling that his strongest results at the start of the season came when Red Bull clearly held a performance advantage over their rivals. Once that vanished, Verstappen has continued to fight and claw for every win and every podium. Perez has simply wilted under that same pressure.

The harsh reality is, no other driver in the field so far in 2024 has made as many mistakes, has had fewer strong weekends or has been destroyed so comprehensively by their team mate as Perez has. And while there is little shame in being beaten by a triple world champion and likely one of the best drivers of all time, it’s very hard not to assume that many of his peers on the grid would likely have done a better job in Perez’s car so far this season.

Red Bull need Perez to return to Zandvoort a driver transformed. If he does not, then he may genuinely be at risk of costing his team the constructors’ championship.

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