IF PEREZ OR RICCIARDO ARE NOT IMPRESSED, WHAT DOES RED BULL DO?

Red Bull is framing their choice of Max Verstappen’s 2025 Formula 1 teammate as a head-to-head matchup between current leader Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo, the last teammate to defeat Verstappen in a full season.

But what happens if neither of them perform well enough to stake an unquestionable claim to the seat?

Since he still has at least one more season with the club to convince Red Bull that he is the best driver for the job, Perez is now in the best position.

Red Bull doesn’t appear to have any young drivers who are really challenging Christian Horner, so Perez has the advantage if he can get his act together. If not, Ricciardo will take over.

However, Yuki Tsunoda has appeared a little more quickly than Ricciardo thus far. Despite appearing to be the underdog internal contender, Tsunoda would be the most sensible selection among those Red Bull can manage.

Promoting Tsunoda would also create the necessary vacancy to further blood impressive reserve driver Liam Lawson as a future insurance policy, while leaving Ricciardo in situ would continue to bolster his current team with valuable experience in a tightly-packed midfield group.

But Red Bull’s desire to satisfy Honda will be on the wane as Honda, which funds Tsunoda’s seat, gears up to return to building engines for 2026 – with Aston Martin this time – so Tsunoda is going to need to prove himself on his own merits rather than rely on Honda patronage.

Unless he’s clearly and consistently faster than Ricciardo in 2024, Tsunoda probably doesn’t get the nod in a marginal comparison.

And so if Perez fails to improve, Ricciardo fails to impress and Tsunoda fails to convince Red Bull he is clearly a cut above Ricciardo, then Red Bull is going to need to promote Lawson from his reserve role – which seems highly unlikely – or dip into the driver market.

As things stand, that most likely means trying to lure one of Carlos Sainz, Fernando Alonso or Alex Albon, all of whom (as things stand) will be out of contract at the end of 2024.

Given how well he dovetails with Charles Leclerc at Ferrari, Sainz would probably be the best choice from those three – but potentially the hardest to snare, unless Ferrari’s apparent reluctance to offer him certainty beyond 2025 becomes a deal breaker for the Sainz camp.

Alonso was less than enamoured with late-2023 rumours linking him to Perez’s seat, but Alonso is not yet guaranteed to remain with Aston Martin through 2025.

Given his awkward history with McLaren-Honda, it’s difficult to see Honda be entirely thrilled by the prospect of Alonso remaining with the team beyond that season, when his 45th birthday will be approaching.

At this point maybe Tsunoda comes firmly onto Aston’s radar, so one last hurrah for Alonso with F1’s current best team, and against its best driver, doesn’t sound totally far fetched – if he and Red Bull both decide they want to do a deal.

Albon is probably Red Bull’s most realistic external option. He can drive a car ‘on the nose’ in a similar way to Verstappen, has clearly matured greatly since being demoted from Red Bull at the end of 2020 then released to Williams, and feels he’s ready to step back into one of F1’s big teams again.

Red Bull currently looks like Albon’s best route for making that leap, but even if the opportunity were to arise Albon – who is out of contract at the end of this year – would then need to ask himself whether it’s worth trading his ‘big fish in a smaller pond’ status with Williams to become a Max Verstappen support act (again).

It would be fair enough for any of these three external candidates to consider that a retrograde step not worth taking – save maybe for Alonso if he simply has no other option and fancies one last proper crack before he retires.

Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Lando Norris, and Oscar Piastri are all clearly better options than Perez, but they are all committed until the end of 2025 (or 2026 in Piastri’s case), and Leclerc is expected to sign a big new deal with Ferrari that will put him much more out of reach than Piastri.

The remaining top picks in the F1 midfield right now are likely Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon, Nico Hulkenberg, or Valtteri Bottas; even in their current form, these players are a surefire improvement over Perez or Ricciardo, thus Red Bull is unlikely to consider any other options.

Red Bull therefore really needs Perez to step up his game in 2024 and/or Ricciardo to show off his magic from Mexico in 2023 often enough to tip the scales in his favor.

In the event that neither of those events transpire, Messrs. Horner and Helmut Marko will undoubtedly be scheduling a lot of challenging F1 driver-agent gathering