Dutch racing driver Tom Coronel believes Sergio Perez’s job at Red Bull is simply to do the “chores”, with him not being capable of winning races consistently.
Perez’s future with Red Bull is still a huge talking point, despite team principal Christian Horner having insisted that the Mexican’s deal for 2024 will be respected.
Having scored just five points across the last three races, Red Bull themselves are clearly starting to feel the pressure of Perez’s struggles, especially as Lewis Hamilton is just 30 points behind in the fight for second in the Drivers’ Championship.
Should Perez lose P2 in the standings to Hamilton, then Red Bull might be left with little option but to drop Checo early, given that Mercedes’ car is significantly inferior to the RB19.
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The 33-year-old has been accused of making a “serious mess” by Coronel, given how often Perez has been in the midfield in recent races.
Perez only scored one-point last weekend at the Qatar Grand Prix, after crashing out of the sprint race and finishing P10 in the main race.
His results clearly aren’t good enough, with the pressure simply continuing to mount on the Mexican driver’s shoulders.
Max Verstappen winning almost every race isn’t helping Perez’s situation, as the Dutchman is proving exactly what the RB19 is capable of.
“Severely unsatisfactory. A very seriously unsatisfactory result,” Coronel said as reported by The Mirror, referring to Perez’s performance in Qatar.
He added: “That’s not because I don’t fully understand it, but that’s because everyone looks at it very logically – one Red Bull is driving at the front and the other Red Bull is making a mess and lounging somewhere in midfield. You don’t have to be an expert to say that he is just making a serious mess of it.”
Whilst Perez’s poor performances are bad for his image, it’s not actually impacting Red Bull too much, as recognised by Coronel.
Perez being in the midfield means he’s not clashing into Verstappen, unlike at Mercedes where George Russell and Lewis Hamilton have collided in the last two races.
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Coronel wonders if Red Bull are happy with this given that it keeps intra-team tension on the low, especially as Checo can be used to “do the chores” if he’s not performing well, whilst Verstappen is busy winning races and championships.
“If you put a good driver next to Max, you get two cocks. So, the Russell-Hamilton effect,” Coronel noted.
“I also sometimes have the idea that Red Bull is fine with it this way. ‘We have one who wins, what difference does it make? Then we let the other one do the chores’. Then, you have to use him for that. He is not going to win a race for you, or at least not the championship.”