Red Bull would have ‘lost respect’ for Sergio Perez due to the extent of his struggles in 2024, according to 1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve. The Mexican was dropped for Liam Lawson after a miserable end to the year. Perez’s 2024 campaign initially looked promising.
He scored four podiums in the first five races and was only trailing team-mate Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship standings at that point. Unfortunately for the six-time Grand Prix winner, the RB20 only became more difficult to pilot from that point onwards, and McLaren , Ferrari and Mercedes all closed the gap to Red Bull in the performance index. When the drivers returned from the summer break, Perez’s confidence was at rock bottom and he ended the season in miserable fashion, scoring just one top-nine finish in his final eight races in F1.
He was axed after a post-season review with Lawson taking his place for 2025. "It's a change that Red Bull needed to make,” Villeneuve told Express Sport, in association with SpinCasino . “It was only getting worse.
For whatever reason, Perez just isn't in the right place at the moment, and when that happens, change is needed. “Things go wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad driver, but when it becomes such a heavy problem, the team loses respect for you and nothing will go your way after that. It's understandable, and it's needed, but there must've been a clause in Perez's contract to allow them to make this change.
“It was prob.