Mexican GP: Red Bull's Sergio Perez dropped out of Q1 at his home race

MEXICO CITY – Sergio Perez's self-proclaimed “terrible” season took another turn for the worse on Saturday when he qualified 18th for his home race.

Perez failed to make it through Q1 as he finished 0.8 seconds behind his teammate Max Verstappen's time in the same session.

The result will do little to calm the noise that has been swirling around his future all season.

Although Perez has a contract until 2025, it is believed that Red Bull consider Liam Lawson at RB as a possible replacement for next season.

“It’s obviously very disappointing,” Perez said after the meeting. “There is one Grand Prix that I really want to do well, that is this one. Unfortunately, this event was really difficult and tricky.”

Perez indicated that he has been struggling with the same car problem for some time.

“I had big problems with braking. Every time I try to brake and increase braking, I just send too much energy through the tires and that makes it very difficult for me to stop the car.”

“That was the case in the last three races where I couldn’t stop the car. I need to modulate my braking behavior a lot, and that's something we can see in the data, but we're not able to fix it at the moment.”

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has rejected suggestions that Red Bull is exploring alternative options.

“Checo is our driver,” Horner said Friday. “He has his contract for 2025. He is competitive. He is hungry. He is not happy with where he is currently. As a team we are doing our best to support him.”