Time of last chance for Pérez? “I can turn my season around in the next 10 races”

There are ten Grands Prix left to compete in this 2024 season: will they be the last ten of Sergio Pérez's career? During the first part of the season, the Mexican had a series of poor performances since his contract extension until 2026, announced on the sidelines of the Canadian Grand Prix. Before the start of the school year scheduled for this weekend in Zandvoort, the observation is striking: “Checo” is 146 points behind his teammate Max Verstappen and is the only driver among the four Top Teams not to have won a single race this year.

A result far from satisfactory, not to say catastrophic, which places Sergio Pérez in the hot seat. If the six-time Grand Prix winner should finish the season – in theory, because everything can happen very quickly at Red Bull… – its presence on the grid in 2025 is anything but certain. The Austrian team could be tempted to replace him with another in-house driver, with Liam Lawson and Daniel Ricciardo at the top of the list. However, the Mexican does not lose hope and wants to believe in a turnaround at the end of the championship.

“I have hope and belief that I can turn my season around in the next 10 races, estimated Sergio Pérez. During the break we understood a lot about the car and the improvements. In general, I think we were a little lost, and now we understand a lot better what's going on with the car. The question is whether we can solve [the problems] and how long it will take. We know that there have been one or two developments which have put us in difficulty. We have a lot of potential but we have to extract it from the car. If we can do this, this season can be very promising. »

Pérez, the quest for the Constructors title to save his skin

For “turn the tide”, to use his own words, Sergio Pérez will have to raise his level of play and score big points in the fight for the Constructors' title against fierce competition. This will have to involve a return to the podiums, a place on the box which has eluded him since the Chinese Grand Prix last April. The 34-year-old driver is optimistic and is meeting in Abu Dhabi to do the accounts.

“I always say the only thing that matters is where I end up in Abu Dhabi. So I have ten races left to get back on track and, I hope, get very good results to finish in style, which would be the goal to achieve, and it really starts here, declared the Mexican in Zandvoort. I just want to get back to the form I had at the start of the year. I kept getting on the podiums, fighting for pole positions. I want Red Bull to be the best team. We were the fastest car at the start of the year and I want to work with the team to reach that level. This is what we need. »

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