Sergio Perez’s 2024 season was almost a carbon copy of his previous year’s results with a good start but a steady decline in form. While his teammate Max Verstappen clinched his fourth consecutive drivers’ championship, Perez was nowhere close to the Dutchman. The Mexican had multiple crashes, Q1 exits, and retirements.
Still, he ensured Red Bull avoided a double DNF throughout the season, which ultimately became his final one with the Austrian team. Crash.net recently posted a statistic on the last double DNF recorded by each team, with Red Bull ranking last on the list.
Here’s where each current F1 team scored its most recent double DNF
How many will be unfortunate enough to bag one in 2025? pic.twitter.com/amr1EjzNz2
— Crash.net – Formula 1 (@CRASH_NET_F1) January 14, 2025
The last time Perez and Verstappen retired from a Grand Prix together was way back at the 2022 Bahrain GP. Both RB18s had suffered from a fuel system issue in the closing stages of the race, allowing Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to finish 1-2 on the evening.
First, it was the Dutchman whose car slowed down on the back straight at the Sakhir International Circuit. With no other option, he pulled into the pit lane, retiring from second place in the race. Meanwhile, Perez spun out on the final lap at the first corner, as his engine abruptly shut off due to the same fuel system issue.
Red Bull’s reliability has improved significantly since then. Throughout the 2024 season, Verstappen suffered only one DNF, at the Australian GP, due to overheating brakes. Perez, on the other hand, managed to finish fifth in Australia, but the #11 driver had five DNFs in the rest of the season with his final one coming at the Abu Dhabi season finale, as he spun out on the first lap in a kerfuffle of cars on the opening lap.
Reliability has improved a lot in F1
Despite F1 having a relatively fresh generation of cars with the ground-effect concept, reliability hasn’t been a bugbear in the past three seasons. Mechanical failures in the cars during a Grand Prix have become rather rare, with retirements only taking place if there is a major accident or crash that damages the cars severely.
Per a graph on Reddit depicting the DNF percentage across F1 seasons from 1950 to 2022, the proportion of cars finishing a race has increased exponentially in the post-2000 era relative to the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. It shows that the 1985 season saw a peak retirement rate of 63.17%, which has come down to 12.81% in 2021.
In the 2010s, over 80% of cars finishing a Grand Prix has become a norm, hinting at how reliable F1 cars have become in general. While the data doesn’t showcase the past two seasons, 2024 saw minimal mechanical failures with many commentators and experts lauding the reliability of all teams’ packages.
