Red Bull ‘faked it’ on Sergio Perez sack decision in grim title prediction

Red Bull’s Sergio Perez.

Eddie Jordan says Red Bull “faked it” over talk of sacking Sergio Perez, and it will cost them in the Constructors’ Championship as they won’t win it.

Although Red Bull handed Perez a new two-year contract after the Monaco Grand Prix, it wasn’t long before speculation was rife that his days with the team could be numbered amidst his latest slump.

Will retaining Sergio Perez ‘come back to bite’ Red Bull?

Failing to reach the podium nine races in a row in the run-up to the summer break, Perez dropped in the Drivers’ Championship while Red Bull’s lead in the Constructors’ dwindled, which allowed McLaren to close the gap.

It led to talk of replacing Perez after the Belgian Grand Prix as team boss Christian Horner admitted they couldn’t run on “one leg”, especially up against the two-car scoring McLaren team.

However, the day after his seventh-placed finish at Spa, Horner announced that Red Bull would continue with Perez after the break.

With their advantage over McLaren down to a slender eight points and Perez’s podium-less streak up to 11 races, Jordan reckons Red Bull will pay a costly price for not making the call.

“I think that Red Bull faked it,” he told the Formula For Success podcast.

“They should have made a decision, and it will come back to bite them, because I now believe they won’t win the Constructors’ Championship, having looked a dead cert.

“But that’s the way you rule the dice.”

The F1 2024 Red Bull team-mate head-to-head stats

F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record between team-mates

F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Jordan: We were all slagging off Sergio Perez but…

However, given Red Bull’s current slump, one that’s left Max Verstappen winless in the last five races, Jordan concedes maybe the problem always was the car, not Perez, and that Verstappen was initially able to drive around it.

“We were all slagging off Perez, but maybe that’s the speed of the car,” he said. “What Max is doing is what Max is able to do.

“Without any doubt, he is the best driver in Formula 1 at the moment. Therefore to finish, fifth, fourth and sixth or whatever… It must be killing him at the moment.”

The former Jordan F1 team boss offered Horner a bit of advice, saying: “Let’s say you’re the team boss. What is the first thing you would do? You say okay enough of the crap, we need to see facts. All engineers come into the boardroom, and we will have a heart-to-heart about exactly where we are.

“What was the set-up we had at the beginning of the season? What was the set-up when we were winning races by 15 seconds and were cruising? What has changed?

“Show me the upgrades because, sure as heaven, those upgrades have not worked. You are fooling yourself. You are trying to believe in a wind tunnel that is giving you miscalculations.

“And make sure nothing gets changed until we can categorically guarantee that it is quicker. I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.

“It’s now catastrophic. Christian Horner has a massive job on his hands because he needs to take out the big stick and start cracking it.

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