Sergio Perez Loses His Cool After Unforgivable Blunder as Daniel Ricciardo Mounts Excessive Pressure to Replace Him at Red Bull

The action-packed Austrian GP weekend is underway and what an eventful one it has been already. The Red Bull Ring’s tricky conditions always promise a lot of on-off track drama. This is largely thanks to the infamous last two corners right before the chequered flag, turns 9 & 10. These two corners always test every driver’s accuracy in placing their cars within the track limits. Most fail despite multiple practice sessions. So imagine the difficulty of the drivers who get only one practice session before the qualifying session because of the revamped Sprint weekend format. This is exactly why most of the grid suffered track time deletions for track limit violations during the session. This is also what made Sergio Perez lose his cool and is a cause for a possible celebration for Daniel Ricciardo.

In Austria, Perez, during his last and all-important flying lap in Q2 during the qualifying session, exceeded track limits. Thanks to his earlier infringements with better timings, Perez was in the danger zone. Perez did improve his time but the track time deletion sealed his fate for the race on Sunday at P15. Now, the Red Bull man has failed to reach Q3 in four consecutive races now.

The Mexican was extremely frustrated when his trackside engineer informed him of his misery. In fact, the Mexican driver was oblivious to the full extent of it. His conversation, as revealed by user @JunaidSamodien_ on Twitter showcases that. 

Sergio Perez: “No way! Where?”

Engineer: “Exit turn 10″

Perez: “Can we go again?”

Engineer: “Chequered flag”

Perez: “It’s a joke with this track limits”

Read More: “Needs to Focus on the Racing”: Red Bull Taskmaster Turns Up the Pressure for Sergio Perez With an Expected Prediction for His Recent Error

This increasingly concerning scenario has given the Ricciardo clan something to celebrate about. In fact, Ricciardo’s fans were already mocking Perez after the precious blunders.

In fact, the start of the weekend has been filled with roadblocks for Perez. The exact roadblocks Ricciardo is probably looking forward to exploiting.

Daniel Ricciardo waiting to pounce on any and every opportunity to replace Sergio Perez or Max Verstappen

Despite being away from the racing, the Australian has been in and around and not made himself completely scarce. His regular work with the team behind the scenes is keeping him relevant. In fact, both Christian Horner and Franz Tost are looking forward to seeing him take on the Pirelli test. However, we might see him back in action earlier than that.

Red Bull’s third driver openly admitted earlier in 2023 to be waiting for an opportunity to get back on track even if it comes at the expense of others’ health. “No, I’m happy, not [retiring but hoping for a call-up] anytime soon – if they’re [Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez] gonna catch a cold, maybe later in the season! But I really do feel at ease and happy with kind of just not taking the first few months of the year seriously,” he admitted.

Guess who is already under immense pressure and feels sick the night before the qualifying session? You guessed it, Sergio Perez.

Perez is under extreme pressure and Ricciardo might not even need natural causes to replace Perez. Just natural selection. It will be interesting to see who ends the season on the other side of the Red Bull garage.

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