MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Red Bull team boss Christian Horner agreed on Friday with Sergio Perez’s assessment of his Formula One season as ‘terrible’ but said the Mexican was still the team’s driver for 2025.
Perez has yet to win this year and is eighth in the standings with 150 points, the lowest tally for any driver in the top four teams. Triple champion team mate Max Verstappen has 354.
“I think he’s summed it up perfectly. It’s been a bad year for Checo (Perez). He started strongly and obviously he’s struggled for form since pretty much Imola onwards and its been sporadic,” Horner told reporters at the Mexico City Grand Prix.
“Azerbaijan arguably he could have won that race almost a month ago. We know what he’s capable of and we’re hoping that we can give him a set-up and the confidence in the car to extract the kind of performances that we know he’s very capable of.
“Checo is our driver. He’s contracted for 2025. He’s competitive. He’s hungry. He’s not happy with where he currently is. As a team, we’re doing our very best to support him.”
Red Bull, dominant champions last year, are second in the constructor standings and 40 points behind McLaren with Ferrari eight points further back and threatening to overtake.
Horner, who has said openly that Perez needs to step up and score important points, recognised that his driver had huge local support.
“(It is) a big weekend for him here…I think he’s endorsing every product, from Uber Eats to toilet toll,” he said.
Despite Perez having a contract for 2025, Horner said the Red Bull and sister team RB will look “at all the options” at the end of the year.
RB are expected to have Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson as their 2025 lineup.
“Checo is currently our driver for 2025. Obviously, there is a seat available in RB,” he said.
“We have the benefit of time to sit down with (RB team principals) Peter (Bayer) and Laurent (Mekies) and look at all the options.”
(Reporting by Janina Nuno Rios in Mexico City, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
