Daniel Ricciardo: Sergio Perez’ Mexico disaster may cause Christian Horner to consider Aussie return

A disastrous weekend for the Red Bull Racing Team at the Mexican F1 Grand Prix has reinvigorated calls for Australia’s superstar driver, Daniel Ricciardo, to be brought back into the fold.

Local hero and top-flight team driver Sergio ‘Checo’ Perez produced one of the worst qualifying and race performances in recent memory in front of his home crowd in Mexico, with F1 fans and pundits moving quickly to remind Christian Horner and the RB powerbrokers that they may have axed the wrong man.

World title holder and Red Bull top gun Max Verstappen was sanctioned out of the race after incurring a 20-second penalty as a result of his battle with McLaren’s Lando Norris during the opening stages of the race.

But that disappointment has been secondary to the abysmal effort from team-mate Perez who finished a woeful P17 (last of the remaining runners) following his Q1 exit on Saturday and a five-second penalty for a false start.

Red Bull team principal Horner has since declined to guarantee Sergio Perez will complete the Formula One season after the embattled Mexican driver struggled at his home GP.

Horner admitted Perez “had a horrible weekend”, that started when he was eliminated in the first round of Saturday qualifying, relegating him to an 18th-place starting position.

Perez was then outside his box at the start and received a five-second penalty.

He later got into a wheel-to-wheel battle with Liam Lawson of Red Bull sister team RB, and the contact caused damage that made Perez’s car uncompetitive as he went on to finish 17th.

Horner had been emphatic two days earlier that the contract extension Perez signed earlier this year was valid for 2025.

But he has performance clauses in his existing contract, and when asked if Perez would finish this season, Horner refused to endorse the driver for the final four races.

“There comes a point in time that difficult decisions have to be made,” Horner said. “We’re now third in the constructors championship.”

Deputy editor of leading Formula One website GP Fans, Dan Ripley, can’t see a way forward for Perez and believes Horner must bite the bullet and reinstate Ricciardo to bring some order back to the team.

“Whatever nonsense is going on with Sergio Perez at Red Bull, it needs to end and it needs to end now. It’s one thing to be out of form and off the pace of Max Verstappen, but it’s quite another to be dropping clangers every other week to the point that even the basics are becoming a troublesome task for the Mexican,” Ripley wrote hours of the Mexican GP.

“Going out of Q1 in a Red Bull should already be an eyebrow-raising level of failure but to then follow that up by picking up a five-second penalty for a false start is just unforgiveable.

“Not only is it time to promote Liam Lawson to Red Bull for an end-of-season feeler for 2025, but it’s also time to bring back Daniel Ricciardo at RB.”

Ripley’s cohort at GP Fans, Matt Hobkinson, posed the question: Would Red Bull have fared better with Ricciardo in the second seat and not Perez if that had been the decision from Red Bull instead of the Australian’s sacking in Singapore?

“The F1 champions might as well be called Oracle Max Verstappen Racing at this stage such is the pointlessness of Sergio Perez in the RB20,”

“Checo is a lovely guy and I have no ill will against him whatsoever, but if the Red Bull hierarchy were willing to ditch Daniel Ricciardo mid-season, then I have no idea why Perez is still with the team.

“Much like a marriage that has slowly but surely run out of love, the team would be kinder to just front up to things and call it quits, than let it drag on for yet another year in the hope that they can turn things around.

“Besides, there are much more appealing options out there for the team.”

A win by Carlos Sainz moved Ferrari ahead of Red Bull for second in the lucrative constructor standings and the two-time reigning champions of the prize that pays an estimated $US150 million is now a longshot to win it for the third consecutive year.

Red Bull’s slip in that category is largely because of Perez’s failures. He’s eighth in the standings, winless on the year, and crashed out of three races.

“He knows Formula 1 is a results-based business, and you know, inevitably, when you’re not delivering, then the spotlight is firmly on,” Horner said.

“When anyone is underperforming, there is always going to be scrutiny on that. You know, as a team, we need to have both (drivers) scoring points.”

Max Verstappen has scored 362 points this season; Perez has scored just 150.

“We’re working with him as hard as we can to try and support him,” Horner said.

“We’ve done everything that we can to support Checo, but there comes a point in time that you can only do so much.”

Perez, although disappointed with his weekend, didn’t sound like a driver worried about his job.

“This has been a complicated weekend,” Perez said.

“I always say it’s my dream to win the grand prix in Mexico and I’ll try again next year. After all of the support from all of these fans, it’s incredible.

“They have given me so much, it’s all worth it for them. We’ll try again for them next year stronger.”

with AAP.