As Mark Hughes reports, ‘Checo’ needed strong performances in the Americas to convince Red Bull to secure his services
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Even as the season closed into its last few races, talk about whether Sergio Pérez would retain his Red Bull drive into ’24 – as per his contract – raged on. He couldn’t control the speculation; all he could do was ignore it while trying to deliver the sort of performances which would bring it to an end. So as the ‘American’ leg of the championship continued – in his home country of Mexico followed by Brazil and the new Las Vegas Grand Prix – he had a lot to focus on.
He had two realistic targets: to clinch second in the points table to team-mate Max Verstappen and so give Red Bull its first ever 1-2 in the drivers’ championship; secondly, to reliably deliver the sort of competitive performances he is fully capable of but which he had not been doing of late. He wasn’t expected to compete with Verstappen, merely to show that he will be a solid support to him in ’24 when the competition from Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren – each of them with super-strong driver line-ups – is anticipated to be closer.
As usual, he was very much the focus of attention in Mexico for the wildly enthusiastic crowd, which happily ignored the fact that Ferrari had locked out the front row, Charles Leclerc from Carlos Sainz. The red cars had suddenly found a great balance as the volatile track temperature came to them, something the team had been anticipating, hence the multiple in-out tyre preparation laps in Saturday practice before qualifying. Equalising the temperatures of the front and rear tyres as you head into the qualifying lap is particularly difficult here – and Ferrari had aced it, helped by a car which can always generate good front temperatures. Verstappen was left only third-quickest in a Red Bull which can be problematical in this regard. Pérez was far closer to him than usual – qualifying within 0.16sec and lining up two places behind. This was a very solid foundation in meeting his late-season tasks, even if the presence ahead of him of Daniel Ricciardo in the junior team’s AlphaTauri was a somewhat uncomfortable one, given that the Australian was tipped to be Pérez’s replacement if ‘Checo’ couldn��
