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Sergio Perez has found an unlikely ally in Michael Schumacher's former teammate Rubens Barrichello, who feels the Mexican, currently out of F1 as he doesn't have a seat on the grid, did a brilliant job driving alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull. He has been linked with a move to Cadillac, as it opens up the massive Mexican market for the American brand.
Perez was a part of Red Bull until 2024 and would ultimately lose his seat to Liam Lawson because the lack of performance from the driver meant that the team would lose the championship.
Red Bull's RB20 was a tough car from which it was very hard to extract performance. It was only a driver of Verstappen's caliber who could do it with consistency, while others struggled to achieve the same. This led to an inflated performance gulf between the Mexican and his teammate, and this would ultimately cost Perez his seat in F1.
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It does appear, however, that Sergio Perez has found an ally in Rubens Barrichello, who lauded the driver's performance alongside Max Verstappen in a Red Bull. Talking to PokerScout, he said:
“Being in the sister car to Max Verstappen is the toughest job in F1.There's a lot of pressure in it. Unfortunately, you don't get the respect when you perform in that role. I honestly believed, from the bottom of my heart, that Sergio Perez was not the right person to drive alongside Verstappen at Red Bull, but he ended up doing so well."
“Perez showed he's the right person to do that role. He won Monaco with Verstappen as his teammate. Red Bull may have waited too long to get rid of him, but he proved a lot of people wrong. When I see people talking badly about Perez, I defend him now, he did so well. Red Bull needed a change and Perez needed it too.”
How did Sergio Perez fare at Red Bull?
Sergio Perez was at Red Bull from 2021 to 2024, during which the team clinched four driver championships and two constructors' titles. The driver picked up his first race win with the team in 2021 at Baku when late-race incidents for both Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton left the door open for him. At the same time, he also played a key role in defending his position from Hamilton in the title decider.
The driver finished the 2021 F1 season 4th in the championship. In 2022, he was 3rd in the championship, just losing out to Charles Leclerc in the last race of the year.
In 2023, arguably the greatest season put together by a team, Perez finished the season as a championship runner-up. It was in 2024, however, that things took a turn for the worse, and he was eventually dropped. The Mexican is in conversation with multiple teams already and would be charting his return to the sport for 2026.
