Pérez, Ricciardo and Red Bull's sticky second-driver dilemma

Red Bull’s dilemma over what to do with Sergio Pérez deepened over the Hungarian Grand Prix.

As Pérez made yet another inexplicable qualifying mistake and Max Verstappen struggled to fifth on Sunday, McLaren recorded its best F1 race weekend for more than a decade. Red Bull, who ahead of last year’s Belgian Grand Prix led the constructors’ championship by 229 points, is now just 51 points ahead of McLaren with 11 races to spare.

The change in fortunes has been extreme. McLaren has enjoyed a 58-point swing over Red Bull across the past six races. A few weeks ago, McLaren CEO Zak Brown said what everyone in F1 has been thinking for a while: while Pérez stays in the form he’s in, Red Bull is beatable in the race for the constructors’ championship.

McLaren’s huge performance gains have been obvious since Lando Norris won the Miami Grand Prix at the start of May, but that improvement also coincided with a rotten run of form for Verstappen’s teammate. Pérez’s last visit to the podium was one race earlier, at the Chinese Grand Prix; in the races he’s finished since, he’s been 4th, 8th, 8th, 7th, 7th, 17th. He’s failed to advance beyond Q1 in four of the past six races. Forget being out-qualified by Verstappen, Pérez has failed to beat Williams driver Logan Sergeant (who has never out-qualified his own teammate) in qualifying four times this season.

The talk about Pérez’s future has intensified recently, even after he signed a contract extension for 2025 — a decision many at Red Bull now seem to regret. The internal power struggle within the team has added a further wrinkle to the decision.

So, with the summer break looming after this weekend’s race at Spa-Francorchamps, what happens next?

Is Pérez’s time at Red Bull over?

Barring a miracle result at the Belgian Grand Prix, Sunday’s race at Spa may well be Pérez’s last for Red Bull. Multiple sources at the team feel that it must make a decision on Pérez’s future during the summer break, which begins on Monday.

Sources have told ESPN a pay-off for Pérez would be in the region of $5 million. There’s been a lot of speculation about whether Red Bull could afford to lose the financial backing Pérez brings from Mexico, but a tipping point appears to have been reached in that regard. First there’s the estimated $10 million difference between finishing first and second place in the constructors’ championship. Then there’s the bonus money Red Bull would miss out on from major partners should it fail to win that title. And then there’s something that is easily overlooked: Pérez’s crash-filled first half of the season has accumulated a hefty repair bill for the team, a considerable headache in the restrictions of the cost-cap era.

Tensions within the team have been bubbling away. One major flashpoint came in the hours after Pérez spun out during qualifying for the British Grand Prix. According to sources who saw the exchange take place, technical director Pierre Waché and other senior engineers had an animated conversation with team principal Christian Horner. Those sources suggested concerns were raised about whether the team could win the constructors’ championship if Pérez were to remain. The 34-year-old Mexican’s poor form is now openly talked about in the Red Bull hospitality unit during race weekend, and tellingly, no one can adequately explain his decline.

Pérez failed to score a point at Silverstone and then crashed out of qualifying in Hungary, although he at least enjoyed a solid Sunday, climbing from 16th to 7th and staying out of trouble. Red Bull was also buoyed by the pace he had shown on Friday, although making such a big point about that smacked of desperation. The usual caveat to his Hungarian Grand Prix applies: his recovery drive was in the quickest or second-quickest car on the grid against a cluster of midfield cars. He should not have been anywhere near that situation in the first place.

While some have suggested a strong result in Belgium might turn things around for him, it is clear that a deeper fear has set in at Red Bull that Pérez’s form has gone beyond the point of saving in the long term. As one source put it to ESPN last weekend: a strong result in the car should be the expectation, not a sign that everything is back to normal. It’s hard to see Pérez getting back to a good level; his confidence is shot and he is clearly unable to get anywhere close to the limit of the car in the same way Verstappen is able to.

So therein lies the key question and the one Red Bull has been grappling with for a while: if it does move on from Pérez, who will replace him?

Ricciardo: sacked or promoted?

Daniel Ricciardo is in a bizarre situation in that he is unsure whether he will even be extended beyond the summer break by RB, let alone if he’s in the frame to replace Pérez. With Red Bull reserve driver Liam Lawson waiting in the wings (to replace either Ricciardo or Pérez), Red Bull appeared ready a few weeks ago to consider jettisoning Ricciardo for the New Zealander.

Ricciardo’s form at the beginning of the year was underwhelming, and tellingly, he appeared to completely drop out of conversations about Pérez’s future. At the Austrian GP, the severity of his situation was made clear. Sources have told ESPN that Horner used a baseball analogy to get through to the eight-time race winner: he was on first base then, but he needed to successfully navigate his way back around to home plate with three more strong performances to keep his seat.

His qualifying performance in Budapest after Pérez crashed could not have been more perfectly timed. He progressed through with a late, late lap in Q1 and then finished ninth overall. A bizarre strategy call from RB, which he was left infuriated by, meant he failed to score points, but the team later felt he would have finished ahead of teammate Yuki Tsunoda (who ended the race in ninth) had he not been called in for an early pit stop. Fortunately for Ricciardo, the strategy call is unlikely to be held against him; one source suggested he no longer is at risk of losing his seat at RB.

It’s odd, then, that Ricciardo could even be in the mix to replace Pérez. There are a few things going for him, though.

He has the benefit of race-winning experience in F1 and has three seasons of knowledge of what it’s like being Verstappen’s teammate. Horner is particularly fond of Ricciardo, and ultimately any driver decision at either Red Bull or RB rests with the team principal. With Horner increasingly at odds with Jos Verstappen, father of Max, and Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko, having Ricciardo racing at the top team might well act as a bit of a safety net for him — assuming, that is, the 35-year-old Australian performs well.

It’s fair to wonder if this version of Ricciardo would be a help or a hindrance to Red Bull in the constructors’ fight. It would be a great story if he helped win the championship, but Ricciardo struggled at McLaren and has had very patchy form since returning to RB. There is a feeling among those in the team that were present for his first spell at Red Bull that, although Ricciardo’s return to the energy drink giant’s fold has been incredibly popular, Ricciardo is missing something from the form he showed between 2014 and 2018.

If Red Bull made that switch and Ricciardo’s form matched Pérez’s, Horner could risk losing face behind the scenes in what continues to a precariously tense situation with those around him and the Red Bull GmbH board.

Is Lawson really the answer?

Lawson has been quietly on the sidelines in all this. The 22-year-old Kiwi impressed in his three races as stand-in for Ricciardo last year and is known to be highly thought of by both Horner and Marko. Sources say he impressed during a recent test with Red Bull, although the limited nature of F1 filming days meant a comprehensive evaluation was hard to come by.

There’s no doubting Lawson’s talent. Red Bull is excited by his future, but there is a nagging feeling that the Pérez seat might be too much too soon. Should it be too much, it risks torching a promising career, which is why Ricciardo appears a more sensible short-term option to some. If Ricciardo is still struggling by the end of the year and Lawson has excelled alongside Tsunoda, the decision for 2024 will be obvious.

One source with good knowledge of the situation said the belief is Lawson will be on the grid at the Dutch Grand Prix after the summer break — the question is whether it’s in place of Pérez at Red Bull, filling the gap left at RB by a promoted Ricciardo, or replacing the Australian at the junior team altogether.

The evaluation process is still ongoing. ESPN understands Lawson will test a 2022 AlphaTauri car at Imola on the Thursday after the Belgian Grand Prix. It is unclear whether Ricciardo will also take part in that test, but it may well be a good opportunity to evaluate both in equal machinery to see who gets Pérez’s seat and who sees out the season as Tsunoda’s teammate. Which brings us neatly onto the final question …

Why not Tsunoda?

To most outsiders, the obvious solution to the Pérez dilemma is Tsunoda. He’s been RB’s in-form driver since the start of 2023. The existential crisis Red Bull finds itself in stems from the signing of Pérez in 2021, which was the biggest departure from what Red Bull had always been about: promoting its homegrown junior talents whenever a seat was available.

One scenario that seemingly ticks a lot of boxes would be moving Tsunoda up alongside Verstappen for the rest of the year.

That would finally give the 24-year-old Japanese driver the chance to prove himself in race-winning machinery and allow Red Bull to show the spirit of its driver programme is alive and well. It would be a huge PR boon for engine supplier Honda as it enters the final 18 months of its partnership with the team. It would give Lawson the F1 opportunity he deserves at RB and would keep big-money partners Visa and Cash App happy that Ricciardo was staying put at their newly branded RB squad.

While simple on paper, it’s anything but in reality. Multiple sources have said Tsunoda has zero chance of being considered for a move up to the top team this summer. Marko has always been a big fan of his talent, and if it were up to him, Tsunoda might already be Verstappen’s teammate. Marko is famed as the man who brought Verstappen to Red Bull but his influence behind the scenes took a hit last year when Nyck de Vries, who he had loudly advocated for, flamed out in just 10 races for the junior team. Marko had to eventually admit he had been wrong and Horner had been right to question the logic of signing De Vries.

Horner has massive reservations about Tsunoda as a Red Bull driver, primarily concerning his temperament. Horner and several prominent Red Bull engineers wonder whether the hot-headed Tsunoda would be a good fit alongside Verstappen; for all of Pérez’s struggles for form, he is considered as laid-back and easy to work with as they come. Some have pointed, rather unfairly, to Tsunoda’s in-race radio messages as a red flag; this rings rather hollow considering some of Verstappen’s radio exchanges with Gianpiero Lambiase. Some drivers just operate like that in the heat of the moment.

Either way, the rap on Tsunoda is not his talent, but how people perceive his temperament. That seems harsh, and the unfortunate situation Tsunoda has found himself in is that he is effectively stuck in purgatory within the Red Bull system, while there are limited options elsewhere. Haas fleetingly showed an interest this year but Red Bull gave him a one-year extension.

Unless something drastically changes in the next 18 months, Tsunoda seems destined to be stuck at the company’s junior team, however baffling the logic behind that might be.