Sergio Perez is not having the greatest of seasons. While in 2021 he played an undeniably crucial role for Red Bull, last year’s third position and this year’s abysmal performances so far have cost a lot of speculation. Fans are starting to grow tired of his poor performances and the Las Vegas GP Qualifying is seemingly the last straw.

He couldn’t secure a Q3 slot while the likes of Valtteri Bottas, Logan Sargeant, and Alex Albon in far inferior cars managed to progress. Fans, on hearing his hopeful message on the radio after the Qualifying didn’t take it too well.

On other tracks, usually Red Bull had the most dominant car. However, in the low-temperature circuit of Las Vegas, Ferraris came to life and gave Red Bull a serious fight. This is when the team would have needed Checo to up his game and try to get maximum points. Despite this, Sergio was not able to secure a spot in the top 10. Nevertheless, this time was not all Perez’s fault.

From the two full practice sessions that have happened so far, it was highly evident that the track evolution played a significant role. As the circuit was rubbered in, even slower cars were able to see a remarkable increase in pace. Knowing that Red Bull would have stood a better chance if Perez went out for a lap in the final phase of Q2 instead of being in the pitlane. Ultimately, this mistake proved to be extremely critical.

His 1:33.855 was only enough to secure him a 6th row (a P12 start) on the grid. After this, Checo did leave a hopeful message for the Milton Keynes-based team. “Not the qualifying we hoped for, we’ll push hard in tomorrow’s race.”

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Fans, however, are not to be fooled. Some are even tired of hearing the same thing over and over again after every qualifying session.

Fans reject Sergio Perez’s despair-filled hope

It is no secret that Perez has had a poor form in qualifying, especially in 2023. Even Team Boss, Christian Horner, admitted to the same. Speaking to the Eff Won podcast, Christian said, “He is not a qualifier, but he’s a great racer.” True to this, he has had many exceptional comeback races on Sundays. However, according to fans, he might very well have secured second place in the championship right now, if not for his poor qualifying and lapses of judgment like in Mexico.

The fans, naturally, are quick to criticize this on a Reddit post. This time though, they could also see that it was not completely Perez’s fault and Red Bull had to take its fair share of blame. Comments like, “That quote sounds more and more like a broken record at this point but today wasn’t his fault.” and “Copy and paste from the previous races. That said, today wasn’t his fault. Team should’ve sent him out, they had enough data from practice and Q1 that track evolution was going to be substantial.” quickly went viral.

Not all fans were disappointed with the performance. Some, with a funny bone, even had ideas to shake things up a little bit; “Just once it’d be refreshing if they said ‘not the qualifying we hoped for, so f*ck tomorrow’s race, we’ll pootle around at the back and treat it as a testing session’.”

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Hopefully, his performance tomorrow at the Grand Prix should be more than enough to stop the speculation about his seat for the 2024 season. He is known for his comeback drives after all.