After another hot and cold weekend at Spa's Belgian Grand Prix, a decision on Sergio Perez's Red Bull fate is now imminent.
Perez's future hangs the balance after an appalling run of performances and results alongside team-mate Max Verstappen over the past three months, which has seen Red Bull come under serious threat in the constructors' championship – the gap with McLaren is down to 42 points.
Perez was set for two key races in Hungary and Belgium to show signs of his old self, but another qualifying crash in Budapest undid what looked like a more promising weekend and relegated him to fighting in another comeback race from 16th to seventh.
In a wet qualifying at Spa, Perez did well to qualify third, which became second on the grid after a grid penalty for Verstappen. But Perez was one of the drivers passed by the Dutchman on his way to take fifth, with the Mexican relegated to a disappointing eighth at the finish.
"Starting on the front row, we felt that third and fifth would be achievable," said team boss Christian Horner. "We achieved the fifth but we didn't achieve the third. So we obviously need to understand where his loss of pace was.
"Based on his starting position, we didn't envisage finishing eighth from second on the grid."
Why Red Bull wants to act quickly
On Monday, team boss Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko are holding crunch talks over whether Perez will have to be replaced by one of Red Bull's other contracted drivers for the remainder of 2024, or whether the Mexican will get 10 more races to save his career.
"For us, the situation is such that we will also go through the overall situation for 2025," Marko told Sky Germany about the meeting. "We have a number of drivers, but of course every result is (important) for Sergio, and eighth place from second on the grid is certainly not what we expected."
Red Bull must act quickly, because next week Formula 1 enters its mandatory summer shutdown for 14 days. That means that if Horner and Marko do decide time is up for Perez, there isn't much time to get someone else through the door, with just the one week before Zandvoort's Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August to get a replacement settled in and ready to perform at the sharp end of the grid.
While Perez's fate is expected to be clear soon, the identity of his replacement might take a few more days to become clear, with Daniel Ricciardo and reserve driver Liam Lawson heading to Imola for comparative tests in AlphaTauri's 2022 AT03. Tsunoda will also take part in a filming day with the team's current car, but is not thought to be under consideration for a mid-season swap.
Why it's such a hard decision
While the odds seem stacked against Perez, the call on his future is not as clear-cut a decision as it might seem. Only two months ago Red Bull handed Perez a fresh two-year deal, a decision it wouldn't have taken if it didn't have confidence that Perez would turn things around.
With the threat of McLaren looming in the constructors' championship, Red Bull has been desperate for him to succeed, and continuing with Perez would be the least intrusive and painful decision for all involved, whether it involves the race team or its marketing and commercial departments.
Perez also showed some glimpses of the driver that ran Verstappen much closer at the start of the season, but frustratingly without sustaining them throughout an entire race weekend.
"What's frustrating is that nobody wants to see Checo struggle," said Horner. "Everybody wants to see him succeed, because it hurts seeing him in the situation that he is in.
"Nobody wants to make that decision, obviously you guys talk about it every day. But in the team we want to get him going.
"You see glimpses, race pace last weekend was strong, he had the fourth best race pace in Budapest but he had a difficult Saturday with a crash in qualifying. To put it on the front row [in [Spa qualifying] was a tremendous effort. Today, just, his race failed."
There is also no slam-dunk replacement either, with Ricciardo coming with his own question marks after an up-and-down season so far. Lawson's relative lack of experience means there is a risk to burn the 22-year-old too soon in the top seat, and it would also upset RB's current driver Tsunoda who feels he should be ahead of the New Zealander in the queue.
What Perez is saying
Perez was understandably annoyed and frustrated by his second-to-eighth slump in Sunday's race, and blamed everything from the strategy to the tyre wear and Red Bull's lack of straightline speed, struggling with his pace on the medium tyres to an extent that his team-mate did not.
After weeks of speculation on his Red Bull and F1 future, the Mexican was clearly fed up with the constant media scrutiny too.
"I think we have too much going on in the team and a lot of things that we have to focus on, and we cannot waste any energy with all this speculation," he said.
"This is the last time I will speak about the future, so just to make it clear for everyone, I will not be speaking anymore. I will not answer any more questions about the future."
The question is whether or not there will be another opportunity to talk about it in the first place.
Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble and Erwin Jaeggi
