Red Bull Racing have chosen Sergio Perez for 2021. The Mexican lost his seat at Racing Point to Sebastian Vettel, but will drive for Red Bull next season where he replaces Alex Albon.
The seat next to Max Verstappen has been a thorn in the side of Red Bull Racing since the departure of Daniel Ricciardo, who was unable to find a successor for the Australian with Pierre Gasly and Alexander Albon. Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez turned out to be suitable candidates for 2021.
In an interview with Motorsport-total.com, Helmut Marko explains once again that Hulkenberg was in fact a contender. On Friday, before the official announcement, the Austrian phoned Hulkenberg for ten minutes, which unfortunately did not work out for him. There were also rumours earlier in the year about the return of Vettel.
''When we decided to replace Vettel for Albon, Vettel was no longer available,'' Marko now lets us know. According to Marko, despite making 'too many mistakes,' his old pupil still has the qualities to succeed at Aston Martin.
''In my opinion, it started in Hockenheim 2018, when he took the lead of the race. Arrivabene was the team boss at the time and since then the relationship with Ferrari has been getting worse and worse. I hope he can find himself again,'' concludes Marko, who this year found Vettel's driving this year not at the 'Vettel level'.
Hulk is at best a steady lower mid field driver ,and a nice guy no tiger there!
I believe this Red Bull opportunity should have gone to younger drivers of which there are many choices, as much as Perez performed well this year, his win was by default ,not by beating the whole field. I doubt he can do much more than support max.
The conversation would have been something like this :
"Hello Hulk, Marko here. Regarding the Red Bull seat, we have given your job application some thought and we have decided to go with Checo. We want to be able to challenge Mercedes for the WCC next year and we want a driver who has a track record of being able to win or at least get onto the podium to be in the team.
Checo has been in F1 for about the same length of time as you, but he has been on the podium 10 times and has won once, but you have not been able to do that a single time, so we are giving the job to the driver with the better track record.
I wish you all the best in the future, but I would suggest looking at a different category of racing, perhaps Formula E or Sports Cars or Nascar. Many retired F1 drivers do pretty well in those categories."