Sergio Perez has had a solid season for McLaren, but they needed him to be a star to fill at least part of the large hole left by Lewis Hamilton.
Whilst the young Mexican has had a few great moments in what has been a very difficult car, Jenson Button has had the edge on him over the course of the championship. To stand a chance of retaining his seat he needed to match Jenson at the very least, or ideally edge ahead.
In many ways 2013 has just been like 2012 performance wise. When Perez has an on form weekend he is a great driver. He drove brilliantly in Bahrain to finish sixth, and his drive recently in India to fifth was also very impressive. His Monaco qualifying lap to take seventh was a stunning display too.
Those performances were the equivalent to those three races last year where he finished on the podium in a strong Sauber. If he could have performed like that at every race then he would have had no problem keeping his seat for 2014.
However just like last year there have been too many races where he hasn’t extracted the most out of the car and himself. There have been a few errors too such as the collision with Kimi Raikkonen in Monaco, and getting a penalty in Spa for not leaving Romain Grosjean enough room on the Kemmel straight.
Consistency is by far his biggest problem. Sadly he hasn’t shown any signs of improvement on that front. Having two or three great weekends in a season of 19 races just isn’t good enough when you are driving for a top team – albeit not a top car.
The best drivers are those who can deliver a high level of performance at every single event. This is what we see from Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, and why they are so sought after. That’s what McLaren need. It’s no surprise to see that they are working desperately hard to get Alonso to return to Woking in 2015.
Unfortunately the stats alongside Button don’t make the best reading for Perez. With just two races remaining (at the time of writing) Jenson has a 25 point gap over him in the championship. In qualifying Jenson is ahead 9-8. Plus he has scored points 13 times so far this season compared to Perez’s nine.
Yes, Perez has had some bad luck which cost him points such as that dramatic tyre blow-out at Silverstone. However Button has had a bit of bad luck too. He could have been on the podium in Malaysia if it wasn’t for a reliability issue. Therefore the points gap in the standings is a fair reflection.
Alongside Hamilton, Alonso or Vettel these stats would have looked decent. A 9-8 qualifying record against someone like Sebastian would have made Sergio look rather good in actual fact, and ensured he had a long future in a good car.
The problem is these stats are against Button. This a guy who is happy to admit that in terms of raw pace he isn’t the fastest out there. At the age of 33 he is now past his peak level of performance (a F1 driver’s peak period is in the 27-31 bracket).
Whilst Button is a great driver he isn’t quite in the same class as Vettel, Hamilton and Alonso. He is a great driver to have in a team alongside one of those big names.
He will reliably score big points every weekend and not make mistakes. He is fantastic at leading a team and setting up a car. Any race where there are mixed conditions he is the man you want in the car.
Whilst all those qualities are great he lacks those final few tenths, which is exactly what Hamilton brought to the table. It’s what McLaren have missed this season. They were hoping that is exactly what Perez was going to deliver, or at least show the potential that he can in the future.
They were expecting him over the course of 2013 to emerge as the team’s number one driver, but it hasn’t happened that way.
Back in Singapore Martin Whitmarsh told the press: “Sergio has a tremendous benchmark in Jenson, who is consistent, a great quality driver, a great team player and who brings a tremendous amount of benefits to our team.”
He added: “For a young charger like Sergio, he knows and I know that he has to come in and beat him. He hasn’t done that consistently enough so far this year.”
Some may say that Perez deserved more than one season in a bad car to prove he is worthy of a long term future with McLaren. However we often see star drivers (or drivers with the potential to be stars) dragging bad cars to places where they don’t belong. Lewis did it all year in 2009, when it took the team a while to adapt to the new aero regulations.
Sergio has only come close to doing that one or two times this season. Perhaps more telling is the fact that Jenson has struggled in poor machinery historically, but in 2013 he has still been able to edge his young team mate.
It’s a brutal decision by Whitmarsh, but McLaren are a team that should be competing for championships. There is no room for sentiment when trying to achieve that goal. Huge calls have to be made. Sergio simply hasn’t shown enough to suggest that he could potentially be key to future success over the next two or three seasons.
2014 is going to be a bit of a limbo year for McLaren with Mercedes customer engines, before Honda arrive in 2015. They obviously feel that they could gain more from giving the young and very talented Kevin Magnussen his big chance next year.
Hopefully after a year of learning and experience he will be in great shape for 2015, when a McLaren championship challenge is more realistic. It will be interesting to see how good a decision it turns out to be.
Looking back McLaren made an impulse decision on the back of Perez’s second place finish at Monza last year. They perhaps should have taken more time with their decision on who should replace Hamilton.
For Perez it was maybe a season too early to join a top team. He would have been better off spending another year at Sauber to gain more experience, and improve his consistency safe from the media spotlight.
Although it hasn’t been a great year he still deserves to be in F1. At 23 he still has time to develop, and it’s not impossible he could get another chance in a top team later in his career. After all, F1 shouldn’t give up on young drivers as we have seen too often in recent times.
Button and past McLaren champion Mika Hakkinen both started to blossom later in their careers. Unfortunately for Perez, McLaren simply needed him to blossom immediately.
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