What Sergio Perez must do to save his Red Bull F1 seat

Sergio Perez is heading into the 2024 F1 season knowing that he is racing for his Red Bull career.

The 33-year-old Mexican is facing arguably the most difficult season of his career as he goes into the final year of his current Red Bull contract amid huge uncertainty.

After a somewhat underwhelming 2023, at least in the context of what his teammate Max Verstappen achieved in the same car, Perez’s future will be one of the biggest stories to follow over the coming months.

Perez knows his seat is up for grabs and most of the grid would jump at the chance to take it away from him given the chance.

So, what can he do to keep hold of it?

Address his qualifying weakness

Sorting out his qualifying form should be at the top of the agenda for Perez.

Even Red Bull team principal Christian Horner cited qualifying as Perez’s biggest area for improvement in an interview with Sky before Christmas, admitting it has been his “Achilles' heel”.

"We need him qualifying nearer the front, nearer to Max and putting more pressure on,” Horner explained. “We can't afford for him to go missing at certain points of the championship and [not] have that consistency.”

Perez’s qualifying statistics in 2023 make for some damning reading.

He was out-qualified 20-2 by Verstappen, claimed two poles (10 fewer than Verstappen) and only made it into Q3 on 13 occasions, suffering six Q2 exits and three Q1 knockouts. He failed to reach Q3 for five consecutive events at his lowest ebb and didn’t beat Verstappen for the rest of the season after that.

Given the dominant RB19 car he had at his disposal, an average grid position of 9.27 highlights how poor Perez was on Saturdays, giving himself far too much to do on race day.

Perez’s race pace is one of his strengths, so if he can get on top of his qualifying performances, he will be making his life much easier.

Control the controllables

An age-old philosophy relating to sporting performance that Perez should heed.

Rather than worrying about outside factors such as the form of rivals like Daniel Ricciardo, Perez needs to laser focus on his own performances to get the best out of himself and take charge of his own destiny.

Both psychology and momentum play a huge role in sport and the same is true in F1. Perez needs to be mentally at the top of his game to block out all the noise surrounding his future, and the questions that will surely come.

After his erratic form in 2023, Perez desperately needs to find some consistency in his performances.

Many athletes compartmentalise with the ‘game by game’ cliche - or in an F1 driver’s case, ‘weekend by weekend’ - in order to get the best out of themselves, rather than looking too far in advance.

Perez will likely benefit from adopting this kind of mantra.

Stop trying to beat Verstappen

This suggestion might sound odd given that an F1 driver’s first goal is to beat their teammate.

But if Perez has learned anything over the last couple of seasons, it is best to accept the harsh reality that Verstappen is simply on another level.

Based on the evidence we have to hand, it is hard to see without some major misfortune playing a role, that Perez could beat Verstappen over the course of a season.

You only have to look at the gaping disparity between them last year to see that.

Verstappen won 19 races to Perez’s two and scored enough points to win the constructors’ championship for Red Bull single-handedly, picking up more than double the points haul Perez managed. 

Perez has already revealed his ambitious target for 2024 is to topple Verstappen and win his first F1 world title.

But to boost his chances of retaining his place at Red Bull, Perez might be better served worrying less about trying to usurp Verstappen, cut out the mistakes that come with that, and accept his place at a team that is ultimately built around his teammate.