Sergio Pérez's Red Bull future looks increasingly in doubt beyond the end of this season after team principal Christian Horner said the driver is "old enough and wise enough to know what the situation is."
The rumour was that F1 stepped in to stop them firing him before the Mexican GP as it would hurt ticket sales. Given Red Bull's normally brutal approach to cutting dead wood, I can believe it.
Definitely a shame for Perez as it's not like he's the worst driver on the grid, but he's definitely lost what he had and probably won't be surprised to have lost his seat.
He didn’t lose anything he was never good enough for that seat to be honest. It’s more evident now because the car is shite compared to previous seasons. He only ended up second last season because the car was dominant. But look at the 2023 race results and you can see that he just can’t keep up. With such a dominant car he should’ve finished every race right behind Max. But for the 19 P1 finishes of Max he only had 4 P2 finishes and that’s not including sprint races.
I guess that's the level of influence FOM have over the teams, we know there's always underhand stuff going on. I think the rumour was discussed seriously but it was a while back and I can't remember where I read it so might have all been rubbish, who knows.