Defiant Perez insists he’s not worried about his Red Bull future as he vows ‘you will see me next year’

Sergio Perez has insisted that he is not concerned about his future, despite Red Bull boss Christian Horner hinting after another tough weekend for the Mexican last time out that the team could be forced to reconsider his position at some stage.

It was a challenging home event for Perez at the Mexico City Grand Prix, having lined up down in P18 on the grid before receiving a five-second time penalty early in the race for positioning his car too far forward in his grid slot.

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Perez then sustained damage to his RB20 during a feisty battle with RB’s Liam Lawson, leaving the 35-year-old unhappy with the New Zealander’s approach. The Red Bull driver went on to finish the race down in 17th and last place.

This led to Horner commenting after the race that it had been a “horrible weekend” for Perez before adding: “As a team, we need to have both cars scoring points and that’s the nature of F1. From the team’s perspective, we’re working with him as hard as we can to try and support.

“I think we’ve done everything that we can to support Checo, and we’ll continue to do so in Brazil next weekend, but there comes a point in time that you can only do so much.”

When asked about this on media day ahead of the Sao Paulo Grand Prix – and whether this weekend had any sense of finality to it – Perez responded: “No, not at all. It’s just rumours, at the end of the day.

“You will see me in Vegas, you will see me next year. I’m not the one that worries about it.”

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When it was then suggested that Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko had hinted that Perez being at Red Bull in 2025 was not for certain, the six-time race winner answered: “Well I know I am. That’s all I can say.”

For now Perez’s focus is on the weekend ahead in Sao Paulo, with the driver keen to move on from the incident with Lawson and the troubles of his home event.

“What happened, it’s in the past,” he remarked. “We move on, and we take those first 10 laps as a hope. We understood what happened in qualifying, we saw issues, we tried to fix it for Sunday, and I think we went in the right direction so that’s definitely promising.”

Perez admitted, however, that he and the team may have their work cut out in terms of fighting back against McLaren and Ferrari.

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“We understood a lot of the issues we had in Mexico, on my side when you look at my first 10 laps of Mexico they were looking good and competitive,” he reiterated. “But we definitely have to find [something] – when you look at the pace from McLaren and Ferrari, they seem to be in another level in the last two races.

“I really hope that we can be in the mix here. We understood a few of the issues, but it’s just not very clear how we’re going to solve them. It’s a different track, the altitude probably had a bigger impact on us [in Mexico], so we’ll see. I think tomorrow we will have a pretty good idea on where we are.”