SERGIO PEREZ MAKES F1 RETIREMENT ADMISSION WITH REMAINING RED BULL GOAL REVEALED

Sergio Perez wants Red Bull to notch up a few more titles before his Formula 1 career is done, but it is “towards the end”.

34-year-old Perez is one of the most experienced drivers on the F1 grid with 273 starts to his name, and while such an age seems young compared to the likes of 43-year-old Fernando Alonso and 39-year-old Lewis Hamilton who are still going strong, Perez is acknowledging that he is approaching retirement.

Sergio Perez wants to retire off back of Red Bull tenure

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper

But, Perez is not going anywhere just yet and has not completed his Formula 1 bucket list. While he wants Red Bull to be his final team – having joined ahead of the 2021 campaign – Perez is not satisfied with the trophies collected just yet.

Red Bull are battling to win a third consecutive Constructors’ Championship in F1 2024, while Perez’s team-mate Max Verstappen is bidding to make it four Drivers’ titles on the trot.

“It’s definitely hard, but it’s worth it,” Perez told The Times in regards to his commitment to being an F1 driver alongside family life.

“I’ve been fighting all my life to be here. I know that I’m towards the end of my career, because I don’t want to do it for too long. There will be a time, I don’t know when, where I will just have to say, look, ‘I cannot live anymore with leaving my family all the time behind.’

“I want to end my career here. I don’t know when, but it’s a team that has given me everything, and I want to give everything back to them as well. Before that, hopefully we are able to win a few more championships.”

F1 2024: How Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez compare

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

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

While Red Bull had dominated Formula 1 after the introduction of the ground effect regulations in 2022, more recently harder times have hit, with Red Bull now winless in their last six races as McLaren continue to whittle away their Constructors’ Championship lead, now down to eight points.

And with McLaren’s Lando Norris having trimmed Verstappen’s Drivers’ Championship lead to 62 points, the Red Bull camp admits that both titles are under threat.

Perez has gone through his own struggles in F1 2024, a drop in performance sparking speculation of a mid-season exit going into the summer break, but he remains in the Red Bull RB20 and was only 0.04s down on Verstappen in qualifying at the Italian GP last time out.

However, Red Bull were consigned to the fourth row, and Perez would rather the gap between he and Verstappen grew again for the benefit of the team.

“No, I wish the gap was a lot bigger and that Max was winning because at the end that will only help the team and in the Constructors’ especially,” Perez told the media including PlanetF1.com at Monza.

“So, yeah, we’ve got a lot of work to do to fix this issue and hopefully the next few races can be better for us.”

In good news for Perez, next up is one of his strongest F1 tracks, the Baku City Circuit, a venue where Perez claimed Azerbaijan Grand Prix victory in 2021 and 2023.

2024-09-05T15:42:37Z dg43tfdfdgfd