Red Bull’s Sergio Perez has responded to claims that he will announce his retirement from Formula 1 at his home Grand Prix in Mexico City. The 34-year-old has been under pressure for much of the season due to his lack of results compared to team-mate Max Verstappen.
And while the Azerbaijan Grand Prix saw him outperform the Dutchman on pure pace for the first time in 2024 – despite his last-lap crash with Carlos Sainz – the Singapore race saw him struggle to 10th place while Verstappen secured second behind Lando Norris.
Although Perez now appears more likely to retain his Red Bull seat for 2025 now Daniel Ricciardo has left RB, a failure to do so would likely mean he is off the F1 grid entirely
And according to veteran F1 journalist Joe Saward, Red Bull and Perez had hatched a plan to reveal his retirement at the Mexico City Grand Prix.
He even claimed that Red Bull had chosen Oscar Piastri as their preferred replacement – although convincing him to leave McLaren and getting him out of his contract would be a separate and challenging matter.
However, Perez has taken to Twitter to seemingly dispel any rumours that he will soon quit the sport.
He posted the infamous clip of the ‘I’m not leaving’ speech from The Wolf of Wall Street, which was delivered by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Jordan Belfort.
Perez is under contract for 2025, having signed a new deal with Red Bull ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix.
Speaking earlier this month, team principal Christian Horner admitted that the engineers had spotted issues with Perez’s car as early as Spain last season which go some way to explaining his lack of performance since then.
Speaking in Singapore, after Perez had claimed that some Red Bull team members had apologised to him as a result, Horner told Sky Sports F1: “I think if we really delve deep into the data, we can actually see hints of it from Barcelona last year.
“I think the problem is, Max’s talent is so good that he’s able to mask some of the issues, particularly on the way into corner entries, and that’s where Checo has really struggled in comparison to his team-mate.
When the downforce came off the cars in Monza, both of them had identical issues, and it really highlighted where the key issues were in the car.”
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