- Perez has spoken out over his departure from Red Bull at the end of last season
- The Mexican was axed amid a drop in form after four years with the team
- Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda have struggled as Perez’s Red Bull successor
Sergio Perez has claimed Red Bull team principal Christian Horner regrets the decision to axe him at the end of last season.
The Mexican driver spent four years at Red Bull from 2021 to 2024, serving as the No2 to Max Verstappen.
Perez finished second in the World Championship standings behind the Dutchman in 2023, having placed fourth and third in the two years prior.
Red Bull took the decision to part ways with Perez at the end of last season amid a loss of form for the 35-year-old, who ultimately finished down in eighth place, 224 points behind Verstappen who had claimed his fourth world title.
Liam Lawson was chosen as Perez’s successor, but the New Zealand driver was brutally axed after just two rounds of racing this season.
He was replaced by Yuki Tsunoda, but the Japanese driver has failed to finish higher than ninth in eight appearances for Red Bull.
Speaking on the Desde el Paddock podcast, Perez reflected on Red Bull’s decision to drop him for the 2025 season and claimed chiefs are regretting their decision to part ways.
‘I know that deep down they are very sorry, I know that from a very good source,” Perez said.
‘People might think I’m happy about it, but no… we had a great team, and in the end it fell apart, little by little.’
Perez, who has been linked with an F1 return with Cadillac, also suggested Red Bull had failed to support him amid doubts over his future.
It came despite him signing a two-year contract at the start of the 2024 season.
‘In the end, that’s how the sport is, decisions were made because there was too much pressure that they themselves ended up creating,’ Perez said.
‘I had a signed contract in Monaco, but from the next race onwards, everyone was talking about my future even though I already had a signed contract.
‘It would have been easy for the team to protect me and say, ‘You know what? We have a driver signed for the next two years’. But that wasn’t the case. From then on, no one talked about anything other than Red Bull race after race.
‘In the end, there was a lot of pressure on my side of the garage… it was putting a lot of pressure on the engineers, on everyone involved, and I think in the end that ended up costing us a lot.’
Horner, however, had claimed in December that Red Bull had tried ‘everything’ to support Perez.
‘We’ve tried everything with him and supporting him and basically he has come to his own conclusion that I think that now is the right time to step away from Formula 1 to take a bit of time out,’ Horner said.
Perez has also claimed the departure of Adrian Newey as Red Bull’s chief technical officer and the subsequent exit of sporting director Jonathan Wheatley have contributed to the team’s problems.
Newey has become managing technical partner at Aston Martin, while Wheatley became Sauber’s team principal.
