‘I will 100% be here next year’ – Perez scotches rumours he will retire at Mexico City GP as he references The Wolf of Wall Street

Rumours of Sergio Perez’s retirement have been exaggerated, according to the Mexican driver himself, with Perez moving to scotch any notion that he would announce the end of his F1 career at his home race next week.

A rumour that Red Bull driver Perez would announce his retirement at the Mexico City Grand Prix had been circulating after the Singapore Grand Prix back in September – where Perez finished a disappointing P10.

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But in the run up to the United States Grand Prix, Perez took to social media, posting a clip of Leonardo di Caprio in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street repeating the phrase “I’m not leaving”.

Asked about the rumours at the Circuit of The Americas, and why he’d felt compelled to repel them on social media, Perez replied: “It’s just that sometimes people link these rumours and a lot of people pick it up.

“Especially back in Mexico, with the Mexican Grand Prix coming up, I didn’t want my fans to be misled into false information. I just want to make it clear that I 100% will be here next year; I have a contract and I will fulfil it, and that’s not in my mind. In my mind is to sort out the issues that we have in the car.”

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Red Bull will run an upgrade on their RB20s this weekend in order to resolve those aforementioned issues – with Perez going on to reveal that the team were struggling with a correlation issue currently that they were looking to get on top of.

“It’s a little bit of an unknown,” said Perez of the upgrade. “In the wind tunnel, we seem to have an issue with the correlation, so we don’t have any numbers for [the upgrade]. We’re just looking to change the characteristics that we’ve been struggling with for the last year and a half or so, and we’re just looking to try and get back that momentum.

“[The Circuit of The Americas] will be a really good track to try [the upgrade at].

“If it works well here, if we’re able to be competitive on this track, then I think our championship can take a massive U-turn.”