Johnny Herbert: “If Red Bull F1 door opens for Lando Norris, should he take it?
“Recently Pérez has been nowhere near Verstappen. In Qatar his performance was embarrassing”
Sergio Pérez has a contract with Red Bull Racing until the end of next year. But is he safe from being bumped? If you look at this team historically you’d probably say no! He has been a race winner, he’s got a lot of positive ingredients as we saw at the start of this season when he was very strong. But Max Verstappen is relentless – and recently Pérez has been nowhere near. His qualifying has been very poor and I hate to say it, but in Qatar his performance was diabolical and embarrassing.
He has batted away talk of retirement, but he hasn’t exactly been putting across the right message to his team recently. He has a fight on his hands, but unless he suddenly starts winning I don’t think it’s probably in his hands anyway. Then again, from Red Bull’s perspective who would it put in to replace him? Is there someone better on the books? They have Daniel Ricciardo and Liam Lawson. Would either be enough?
Ricciardo was competitive against Max when they were team-mates, but that was a long time ago – and Max is a high percentage better now than he was then. So you look at Liam. He did very well as substitute for the injured Ricciardo, but didn’t blow away Yuki Tsunoda at every race. I wrote last month that AlphaTauri were wrong not to give him a seat for 2024, but would it be fair at this stage to throw him in with the lion in the senior team? You’d have to say no, impressive as he has been.
“Red Bull has to weigh up how much it can rely on Sergio”
So you go back to Sergio. Should the team just keep him? He’s not a threat to Max, he has picked up points for the constructors’ and generally – recent troubles aside – he races well. It’s a conundrum for Red Bull.
As Christian Horner has said, other options are contracted elsewhere. If you potentially wanted the strongest pairing you’d buy up someone like Lando Norris. It would take a big chunk of money to pay off McLaren, but if you doubt Pérez will do enough to help the team win another constructors’ championship maybe it’s a price worth paying. Red Bull has to weigh up how much it can rely on Sergio if Max was ill or injured. At Mercedes a few years ago, Valtteri Bottas on his day could beat Lewis Hamilton and when he didn’t he was usually a few tenths off him. At times this year Pérez has been nearly a second, sometimes more, off Verstappen. Too often Red Bull has been relying solely on Max.
There’s been talk about Norris and Red Bull in the future. But if the opportunity knocks now should he even take it? I jumped into the lion’s den against Michael Schumacher at Benetton, but it was worth a punt because I knew Lotus was coming to an end. It’s a different case for Norris. He’s in a good place at McLaren. Yes, he has a new threat from Oscar Piastri but that’s a positive thing. When I had my little battle with Mika Häkkinen at Lotus it was good for both of us. It woke us up, kept us on our toes because we knew we both had to be on top of our games. We had an equal chance too, and the same is true at McLaren today for Oscar and Lando.
At Red Bull it would be another scenario. It’s not just the car, it’s all the little bits around it that can make your position unstable. That was my experience at Benetton. My problem wasn’t the car, it was Flavio Briatore who didn’t want it to be fair. That gets into your head and it churns you up. For Lando, he doesn’t have to worry about that at McLaren. Leaving for Red Bull would be a massive risk because he knows he’d be up against someone who is favoured – and understandably so. I could see why it happened with Michael because he delivered, and so does Max.
But is there ever a perfect time to take the leap? I certainly have no regrets going up against Schumacher in 1995. I took two wins, finished fourth in the championship, we won the constructors’ and it was my best F1 season. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was worth it. Lando, as I did, will want a world championship – and a Red Bull would give him that chance. But would it really? The other question he would need to ask is, will he be able to win a title in a McLaren in the next couple of years? That’s his conundrum. Given the team’s current progress, actually I think there’s a chance the answer to that is yes.
So in his shoes, would I make the leap? Given where McLaren has got itself to, no.
Johnny Herbert was a Formula 1 driver from 1989-2000 and a Le Mans winner in 1991.
Follow Johnny on Twitter @johnnyherbertf1