Sergio Perez‘s seat at Red Bull has been a topic of contention for quite some time now. He had quite an underwhelming 2023 season, scoring less than half the points his teammate and champion, Max Verstappen, scored. Despite finishing second in the Drivers’ Championships, a large part of the F1 community raised pitchforks against the Mexican. His qualifying performances left little to be desired, and the fact that he managed to finish on the podium only a handful of times, despite being in the most dominant car in the history of Formula 1, didn’t sit well with Red Bull fans. But it looks like F1 fans aren’t the only ones questioning his future.
Naturally, there has been an incremental increase in hype for Daniel Ricciardo to replace the Mexican Minister of Defense in Red Bull‘s second seat. Especially after the Honey Badger’s amazing performance in Mexico. However, the team has since confirmed that the driver pairing remains unchanged going into 2024, with Christian Horner strongly advocating for Perez in the coming year.
Horner admits "everything is open" for 2025 Red Bull line-up with Ricciardo back in the fold ⤵️#F1 https://t.co/ZvgGsUQpEy
— Formula 1 (@F1) December 20, 2023
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However, this Christmas season, Abu Dhabi Grand Prix‘s official X account took advantage of this speculation and posted what fans called a “widely inappropriate” post. Despite being deleted, the post is now forever immortalized on the Formula One Subreddit, and fans are fuming with the cheap joke the X account made at the expense of Sergio Perez.
In a recent interview, Perez stated that he loved to watch Home Alone with his kids on Christmas. Not much time passed before Abu Dhabi Grand Prix’s X account twisted the popular children’s movie poster to take a swipe at Perez. Going with the caption “Is Checo’s seat safe this holiday season?”, they posted a photoshopped image of Perez as Macaulay Culkin, while the two robbers were superimposed by pictures of Daniel Ricciardo and Christian Horner. Needless to say, Perez’s fans didn’t take too well to the Abu Dhabi GP’s social media activity.
Read More: Sergio Perez’s RB Seat Still Under Threat Despite Daniel Ricciardo Signing AlphaTauri Extension
Reddit is in furor after the attack on Sergio Perez
Fans just couldn’t understand how an official account handled by one of the races on the calendar could make such striking and controversial jokes. They called the official account out, demanding a more professional handling.
“F1 social media accounts really need to start acting in a more professional manner, and not talk about drivers being kicked out, in exchange for some cheap engagement. They did the same to Nyck de Vries earlier this year. If I ever was a F1 driver, I’d be fuming and call out FOM on this.”
Some fans couldn’t just wrap their heads around how inappropriate the joke was. “Lmao. Who is running this account, this is wildly inappropriate.”
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Some users did manage to look at the funny side of things, going down into a “rabbit hole” of sorts. “Abu Dhabi GP’s official account, AND other GP social media accounts can be rather cheeky. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of looking at a few of the accounts, and some of the jokes they make are some top tier trolling. It catches me off-guard sometimes, as these accounts are the official social media pages for the race events. 😂”
However, this didn’t absolve the account of the joke that it made in poor taste. “That’s just low,” one fuming fan wrote.
A lot of the fans were angry at the “Really unprofessional” way that the Abu Dhabi GP’s social media team handled the account. “I understand the hate from fans but this?”
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While the Abu Dhabi GP’s X account has since deleted the post, it looks like the damage is already done. What’s your take on the situation? Let us know in the comments below.
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