Daniel Ricciardo sends Sergio Perez message with Red Bull ‘expecting more’ verdict

VCARB driver Daniel Ricciardo.

Daniel Ricciardo has warned Sergio Perez that Red Bull “are expecting a bit more” from Max Verstappen’s team-mate amid mounting rumours of a mid-season F1 2024 seat swap.

Despite signing a new two-year contract with Red Bull as recently as last month, Perez is at risk of being dropped by the team after a poor run of form which has seen him score just 15 points across the last six races.

Daniel Ricciardo: Red Bull ‘expecting a bit more’ from Sergio Perez

PlanetF1.com reported at last month’s British Grand Prix that Red Bull are not ruling out a potential mid-season seat swap between Perez and Ricciardo, who is currently competing for junior team VCARB.

It is understood that a clause within Perez’s revised deal would allow Red Bull to drop the Mexican driver if he is 100 points behind Verstappen at the summer break.

Perez currently sits sixth in the Drivers’ standings ahead of this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, the penultimate race before the August shutdown, trailing his team-mate by 137 points.

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Ricciardo claimed all but one of his eight career victories with Red Bull between 2014-2018, but has largely struggled since returning to F1 with VCARB (then AlphaTauri) a year ago, registering just three points finishes in 20 grand prix starts.

The 35-year-old has shown improved form in recent weeks, however, scoring in two of the last four races in Canada and Austria.

Speaking to reporters in Budapest, Ricciardo admitted that Red Bull were expecting more from Perez in F1 2024.

He said: “I guess it depends how we’re spotlighted in the media, but the truth is every driver is under pressure.

“Even the ones that are killing it, there has been pressure for them to keep performing.

“So my point is that we all feel it. Obviously, I’ve been in the spotlight a bit this year, Checo’s in the spotlight [now].

“Even after my good race in Montreal, I said: ‘Look, I need to do another good one because you’re only as good as your last race and one good weekend doesn’t quite let you off the hook. It temporarily does, but then it can quickly change.’

“Yes, of course, I know. I’ve seen some statistics that Max has scored a lot more points than Checo and, of course, yes, they are expecting a bit more.

“But this is the sport. It’s what we’re in. We feel it all the time. It’s just who is in the spotlight [this] week. It’s up to us to obviously try to shut it out.

“And it’s not easy as well sometimes.

“If everyone is just always asking you questions about [your future] – you have this, you have that – it sometimes feels very negative or can sometimes feel heavy.

“But I think in my experience – and I include Checo here as well, because he’s also been in Formula 1 a similar amount of time – we have dealt with it enough that I think you learn just to realise to focus on the engineering, focus on the car setup and the rest.

“You hear it, but you have to just roll with it.”

Ricciardo returned to the Red Bull fold as the team’s reserve driver at the end of the 2022 season, having being dropped by McLaren after two difficult seasons alongside Lando Norris.

The 35-year-old admitted that questions over a driver’s future can be “relentless” but stressed the need to “just deal with it.”

He explained: “It can feel relentless and obviously I experienced that a bit at McLaren.

“Those media sessions are not exactly enjoyable, so you’d be lying if you said: ‘Oh, it doesn’t bother me or take a little bit away.’

“But you have to accept that and try to then just deal with it.

“I always try to be the bigger person in terms of [saying]: ‘That’s what I signed up for, I’m trying to be the best in the world at something and at times I’ll probably fall short and this is now what’s going to come with it.’

“So you make your own bed and you just have to be OK laying in it sometimes if the sheets aren’t made. It’s a nice quote, I’ll copyright that…”

Ricciardo went on to declare that Red Bull have a results-driven culture, with Perez holding the power to turn his situation around if he can rediscover his best form.

He added: “I think being in the Red Bull family, in this program – I’m not a junior anymore, but I know how it works – it’s always result-driven.

“I think if we are doing good enough, then we put ourselves in the best seat. If there is some movement, then we hold the power in our results.

“There’s much happening in F1, but at the end of the day it’s in our control with what we do behind the wheel and what the stopwatch says.

“So we try to control the controllables and I think, in that situation, quite a lot is in our hands.”

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