What Happened to Sergio Perez?: Why Was Red Bull Driver Penalized in Mexico After the Race Start

Sergio Perez’s woes continue in 2024 as he received a five-second penalty at his home race in Mexico even before the Grand Prix began. The stewards gave the Mexican driver this penalty for a false start.

Soon after the stewards gave their decision, Red Bull relayed the message to the 34-year-old on the team radio. His race engineer Hugh Bird said, “So we have a five-second penalty. We were forward of the grid box. We were too far forward”.

Although his race engineer confirmed that Perez was at fault at the race start, the former Racing Point driver yet seemed puzzled about the decision. He asked the team to review the incident again to confirm as he felt he was not ahead of his grid box.

This penalty seems to have cost Perez massively as he is running in 16th out of 17th (at the time of writing) after serving his penalty during his pit stop. Although Perez had a disappointing start to the race, he has shown incredible pace since. The 34-year-old seemed to pull out overtake after overtake to move himself up the order.

If Perez does not make it up to the points in this race, his place in F1 and especially at Red Bull would come under massive jeopardy. This is because he has simply failed to match his three-time champion teammate Max Verstappen over the past couple of seasons and now seems to be falling further back.

After all, he himself admitted ahead of this weekend’s Mexico City GP that he has had a “terrible” season. What would further concern Perez is that Liam Lawson is competing in just his second race this season in Mexico City and has been highly impressive so far.

With several experts having claimed that Red Bull are going to evaluate Lawson’s performances over the next few races before they make their decision, this will only add further pressure on Perez. Assuming the #11 driver fails to impress in the remainder of the Mexico City GP, he would have just four races to prove himself to Red Bull.