Sergio Perez is now in his fourth season of Formula One. Since then he has gained a reputation for causing crashes, he has been dubbed as arrogant, has only outscored a team mate once and despite all this, he has achieved four podium finishes in his career. While a lot of people were dubbing him a future world champion after his supposedly impressive 2012 season, I didn’t quite jump to that conclusion so quick. While I have to admit that Perez has been massively impressive on a few occasions, his inability to string together consistently strong results means that I can’t consider him a future champion for the time being.
Perez graduated into Formula One through the pretty standard route of graduating through the GP2 series, as a lot of drivers in Formula One do. Perez finished second in his second season in the series, but missed out on the title to Pastor Maldonado. He graduated to the Sauber Formula One team for 2011, partnering Kamui Kobayashi, who was in his second full season at this point. Perez had a relatively solid season, scoring 14 points. Meanwhile, Kobayashi scored 30 points (six of those while Perez missed the Canadian Grand Prix). He quickly established a reputation for qualifying poorly on a Saturday, and making use of alternate tyre strategies to make his way up the field on a Sunday.
Perez and Kobayashi were retained for 2012 and I felt as if it was rightly so at the time. One season is not long enough for a driver to show his full potential. Perez stunned the paddock by finishing second at Malaysia after using an alternate tyre strategy compared to team mate Kobayashi, who seemed to plummet down the order. It was a good drive, don’t get me wrong, but it was a race that Perez really should have won, and it wasn’t the champions drive that people claim it to be in my eyes, although some people claimed that he was a shoe-in for a 2013 Ferrari drive and that he will become a multiple World Champion. After this, Perez went four races without points while Kobayashi picked up 11, but Perez picked up another podium in Canada. After qualifying a really poor fifteenth, Sauber decided to split their strategies, and with how the race panned out, Perez made it onto the podium using a different strategy to those around him. It was once again a good drive; he made his strategy work, but the nature of the performance by the team glorifies it a little. It was a similar situation at Monza, where after a five-race run of poor results compared to Kobayashi, Perez picked up another second place, where he was just one of three cars to go for the prime then option strategy. Ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix, it was announced that Perez would replace Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, a move that raised many eyebrows through the paddock, and one that I was massively sceptical of at the time. Perez would spin off due to an unforced error in that race while Kobayashi delivered a very emotional and well-earned podium. Perez was picked over the likes of Kobayashi, Paul di Resta and my personal preferred choice Nico Hulkenberg to replace Lewis Hamilton. While the Force India was arguably inferior machinery compared to the Sauber, both their drivers were delivering consistent points finishes, albeit no podiums. Perez would fail to score a point in the last six races of the season, while Kobayashi picked up 25. In Perez’ strongest season to date, he only managed to beat his team mate 66-60.
Perez got his chance with a big team in 2013 with McLaren. The team were suffering the loss of Hamilton to Mercedes and it didn’t help that the car that year was pretty poor. This would be the season that he would gain a reputation for being a crash-happy driver, even hitting his team mate Jenson Button on a few occasions, with the Brit asking the team to ‘calm him down’. Perez’ spectacular overtakes at the Monaco Grand Prix were nulled after he caused a silly collision with Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen, with the Finn saying that somebody should “punch him in the face”. McLaren failed to pick up a single podium that season let alone a win, but Button was significantly ahead on points, leading 73-49. Hulkenberg scored more points than Perez and di Resta had one point less despite clearly being in significantly inferior cars. There were very few times in 2013 where Perez actually justified his position as a McLaren driver, India was certainly one of those, beating Hamilton and Raikkonen on merit that day, who were in faster cars. However, one decent race in a season is not enough to justify being retained by a top team, and Perez was dropped for a rookie, Kevin Magnussen. Some were surprised, some disgusted. I felt as if it was absolutely the right decision. He was also publicly slammed by former McLaren co-ordinator Jo Ramirez as being “arrogant”, and a driver who is no better than Button, who is rarely regarded as one of the best on the grid.
Perez moved to Force India for 2014 and was partnered by Hulkenberg. It was always going to be incredibly difficult for Perez to have any hope of beating Hulkenberg given that Hulkenberg performed better in a worse car last year. Perez has so far this year done exactly what Perez does best: have a couple of good races, qualify poorly, and be involved in plenty of incident. His podium finish at Bahrain was absolutely superb; I cannot deny that, it was probably his best race weekend performance of his career so far, but daft incidents at Australia, Monaco, Canada, Britain and Hungary has cost him a lot of points, and led him to being called “dangerous” by veteran Felipe Massa. Despite troubling Hulkenberg on a number of occasions this year, it is currently 70-39 in favour of the German up until the Singapore Grand Prix, a huge margin, with Magnussen and Perez switching positions in the championship currently, despite the cars being roughly equal and Magnussen being in his first year.
While it is one thing to have an incredible race from time to time, it is definitely another thing to beat your team mate week in, week out, in both qualifying and in the race. I’m yet to see this kind of form from Perez, and Ramirez’ comments seem somewhat justified when Perez hasn’t really changed his way over four years in Formula One, and I don’t think there’s room at any top team for a crash-happy arrogant driver who has a handful of decent races a season and cannot seem to deliver consistently. Perhaps he needs to take a page out of Romain Grosjean’s book and change his mentality a bit. Although we are perhaps beginning to see Perez improve his mentality a bit, I still think that it is going to be a long time before I put him in the bracket of Hulkenberg, Valtteri Bottas, Grosjean and Daniel Ricciardo.
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