Sergio Perez: “I was the distraction” as Horner saga swirled — and now it’s Cadillac next
Sergio Perez has offered a blunt reading of his turbulent Red Bull exit, admitting his underperformance in 2024 became a shield for the team during the Christian Horner controversy.
Speaking on the Cracks podcast, the Mexican said the spotlight burned so hot on his results that it pulled focus from the allegations levelled at Red Bull’s then-team boss. “There was also so much pressure that year,” Perez said. “Christian had some issues, so it was also a bit that I was the distraction. I was the big distraction. No one talked about anything but me, my performance, how badly I was doing.”
Perez spent 2021-2024 at Red Bull, picking up the bulk of his six career wins and playing the enforcer in a car that often looked untouchable. But 2024 got away from him — a run of ragged Saturdays, too many Sundays spent fighting traffic, and the narrative wrote itself. By season’s end Red Bull moved on, and Perez, still only 35, took his time before eventually landing a return to the grid from 2026 with the Cadillac F1 programme. He’ll line up alongside Valtteri Bottas when the American marque makes its debut in Melbourne.
That pairing won’t get many “future dynasty” headlines, but it will get respect. Both know how to build a garage, both understand how to move a project from PowerPoint to pit wall, and both have enough craft to nick points when a new entrant’s season gets scrappy. It’s not hard to imagine Perez, forever stubborn in wheel-to-wheel combat, relishing the underdog brief.
None of this unfolded in a vacuum. Perez’s final Red Bull season collided with the long-running Horner storm. The team principal was accused by a Red Bull employee of inappropriate behaviour — claims Horner denied and was twice cleared of. The story rumbled on regardless, and by July 2025 he was out, dismissed after a subdued start to the campaign.
Horner hasn’t disappeared. Far from it. As reported widely at the time, he agreed a significant settlement with Red Bull in September 2025, clearing the runway for a potential F1 return in 2026. Aston Martin chatter bubbled in the closing weeks of last season, but Alpine has emerged as the paddock’s favourite landing spot, with Horner understood to be pursuing the purchase of Otro Capital’s 24 percent stake in the Enstone outfit.
There’s a snag. Company documentation indicates Otro’s sale window is time-bound and subject to Renault’s approval, a layer of governance that could keep the deal idling until mid-September unless a claw-back provision is triggered sooner. None of that rules out a move; it just makes the calendar as important as the cheque.
Horner, for all the noise, remains one of the era’s most successful team bosses. Which is why teams keep picking up the phone. Whether Alpine ultimately becomes his next project or another route opens up, his name will keep circling until someone grabs it — or the clock runs out.
Back on Perez, his comments are unvarnished but ring true to anyone who watched 2024 unfold. When a top team’s second car starts routinely missing Q3, the conversation narrows. It’s the cost of doing business at the sharp end. And for a driver like Perez, whose value was so often measured in the art of disruption — backing up rivals, extending stints, making a mess of other people’s strategies — becoming the story in all the wrong ways was brutal.
The next chapter is cleaner. Cadillac’s entry gives Perez something fresh to shape and a teammate who speaks the same language when it comes to development. The bar isn’t victory laps; it’s foundations. Avoid gimmicks, build a reliable baseline, and cash in when others misfire. Perez has spent four years living with the standard Red Bull demanded; that intensity doesn’t leave you.
As for Red Bull, the team has seemed almost bored by drama over the years, largely because the car took care of it on track. In 2024 and into 2025, that force field wavered. Perez’s view that he became a convenient lightning rod is unsentimental, but it’s also classic paddock pragmatism: if people are talking about you, they’re not talking about something else.
We’ll see both stories snap back into focus soon enough. Horner’s next move is being brokered in boardrooms, and Perez’s is being pieced together in a wind tunnel with a gold crest on the wall. Melbourne 2026 will show us how far Cadillac has come on day one — and how much bite Perez still brings when the stakes are simpler: a new team, a clean sheet, and nothing to distract from the driving.
