Christian Horner has revealed that Sergio Perez’s two-year contract extension is formatted as a one-year deal with an option for a second year if both parties are satisfied. The Mexican driver couldn’t celebrate his new terms with a strong qualifying result though, dropping out in Q1 at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Perez faced stiff competition from the likes of Carlos Sainz, Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda in the battle to become Max Verstappen’s team-mate for 2025 and beyond, but in the end, it was Red Bull’s incumbent driver who got the nod.
Speaking to Viaplay about the team’s 2025 line-up, Horner said: “They are all Red Bull drivers. We decided to extend Checo for one more year, but in the meantime, we also wanted to exercise Yuki’s option. He is doing great at VCARB at the moment. So yes, he will stay for another year.”
After realising that he described Perez’s contract as a ‘one-year deal’ he quickly clarified: “Well, one plus one equals two, so it’s a two-year contract. As with any contract, there is all kinds of things in it, but that is, of course, between the driver and the team.”
The timing of the announcement was particularly curious following a miserable weekend for Red Bull’s second driver at the Monaco Grand Prix. Perez was eliminated in Q1 in Monte Carlo for the second year running, before crashing out on the opening lap following contact with Kevin Magnussen.
Checo’s woes worsened in Montreal too. The 34-year-old struggled to make an impact with his first couple of Q1 runs and was ultimately unable to avoid the elimination zone as a late improvement from Alex Albon condemned him to a second successive bottom-five start.
Assessing Perez’s qualifying struggles, Horner said: “It was disappointing for Checo to miss out by such a small margin in Q1 as he struggled with the rear grip in the car.
“We’ll have to look into the reasons for that so that we can give him the best chance of coming through the field tomorrow, which we know he’s capable of.”
The Mexican’s dismal qualifying turnout was made worse by the fact that both Tsunoda and Ricciardo made it through to Q3 with the latter recording a season’s best P5 result to shake off his doubters after Jacques Villeneuve gave a scathing assessment of his talent.
