The renewal of the contract between Sergio Pérez and Red Bull until the end of 2024 not only sheds light on the future of the Mexican driver. For more than a decade, the team has always maintained (at least with one driver) the possibility of evaluating in extremis the line-up for the following season, a necessary strategy to value the youngsters of the Red Bull ‘B’ team, Toro Rosso (now called AlphaTauri).
In the past, the Marko-Horner tandem has gone further, deciding changes during the season, with Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly relegated without notice, confirming a management based on the feedback of the moment. A modus operandi that is also possible thanks to the contract that the young people in the energy drink program have always been forced to sign.
Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri
With the selection of Sergio Pérez, Red Bull has in fact changed its strategy from last year. For the first time (since 2007) he hired a driver he didn’t have in his academy, effectively rejecting Pierre Gasly despite the Frenchman’s brilliant season at AlphaTauri . The confirmation of ‘Checo’, made official this Tuesday, is one more step in a new direction, since it almost definitively closes the doors of the main team to the Frenchman, who still had hopes for 2023.
That decision effectively determines other options, the first of which is the certainty that until the beginning of 2025 no “junior” pilot can aspire to promotion. It is a definitive end for Pierre Gasly (who, not coincidentally, is already active in the market, evaluating alternative solutions outside the orbit of Red Bull), a clear message for Yuki Tsunoda, who can at best await his confirmation in Faenza by another two seasons, and also a little reassuring message for the youngsters who are now active in Formula 2, Juri Vips and Liam Lawson .
It is also worth noting that, after Gasly, the youth branch led by Helmut Marko no longer produced and promoted Formula 1 caliber drivers, let alone Red Bull level. For years, the Austrian manager has run a kind of nursery that has had 20 young people in a single season, a number that has been drastically reduced. All this with a junior team at your disposal such as AlphaTauri, which has always been in charge of evaluating the most deserving drivers in the context of Formula 1 .
Vips judge, piloto reserva de Red Bull Racing
Now Red Bull has changed its strategy. The new contract signed with Verstappen that ends at the end of 2028 (the longest in the history of Formula 1) confirms that the path is clear for Marko and Horner. The second car must have a reliable and experienced driver, which is what is needed to aspire to that constructors’ championship that eluded them last year. In the specific case of Pérez, the renewal is also an important recognition (financially and professionally) that will balance any request that the team makes of him to support Max Verstappen.
Red Bull has understood that in a very close world championship, like the one underway in 2022, having a driver in the garage who does not know what his future can be a counterproductive strategy, after the Spanish Grand Prix where there were orders team, Pérez was summoned to Milton Keynes to sign the contract that guarantees him a seat at Red Bull until the end of 2024. For a driver who seemed close to having to say goodbye to Formula 1 in December 2020, that is not Little thing.
