Sergio Perez has officially announced his departure from Red Bull Racing ahead of the 2025 season, but the writing has been on the wall for quite some time. In fact, it’s been there much longer than we may have expected.

And all it takes is a quick peek at Netflix’s docuseries Drive to Survive to find out just when Perez’s struggles at Red Bull began.

Hiring Sergio Perez “was a bit of a risk” says Horner

In 2021, Red Bull Racing signed Sergio Perez to join the team alongside Max Verstappen. That season would prove to be extremely critical for the team, with Verstappen taking his first drivers’ championship over Lewis Hamilton and kicking off a brief era of Red Bull domination.

Perez was a surprising pick for a team that has largely attempted to pull talent from its own driver pool. But rather than promote someone without much experience, Red Bull opted for a driver who’d been in the sport for a decade racing for the likes of Force India and Sauber.

Just one year later, Drive to Survive revealed the cracks in the foundation.

Christian Horner, the team boss of Red Bull Racing, spoke of the ‘risks’ associated with Checo in Season 5, episode 7, titled ‘Hot Seat.’

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“Hiring Checo was a bit of a risk,” Horner told the cameras. “At 32 years of age, he’s in the senior years of his career.

“You know, you start to see cracks and sometimes, as a team principal, you’ve got to make big calls.”

Cracks. Big decisions. Horner’s language in that brief Drive to Survive clip echoes many of the sentiments he expressed throughout 2024, as Perez’s performance languished.

In the episode, Horner continued, “There’s probably half the grid that would like to be in the team, whether it be Daniel Ricciardo, Lando Norris could be on the market. Even Yuki.”

Though the 2024 season started out strong for Perez, his performance began to suffer after just a handful of races, leaving the team to wonder much longer it could retain the Mexican driver — particularly after Team RB sacked Daniel Ricciardo after Singapore for related performance issues.

After a disastrous Mexico City Grand Prix, Horner noted that “Checo has had a horrible weekend” but that “Formula 1 is a results-based business, and inevitably, when you’re not delivering, then the spotlight is firmly on.”

In Baku, when Perez crashed out from a podium position, Horner described the event as “frustrating” to media, including PlanetF1.com, and that it was “a great shame for him not to capitalize with a podium, which has been costly in constructors’ points and crash damage.”

Perhaps most tellingly, though, Horner recently addressed concerns about sacking Ricciardo when Checo was performing poorly via an episode of F1 Nation, and the writing seemed to be on the wall there as well.

“The reason that Daniel was in that car was to get himself back into a position to, ultimately, be there to pick up the pieces if Checo didn’t deliver,” he told F1 Nation.

“The problem was they both had issues with form at varying times. Checo started the season very well, very strongly, and Daniel was struggling. And then, obviously, as Checo lost form, Daniel found a bit of form, but it was never compelling enough to say, okay, we should switch the two drivers.”

It certainly appears that the writing has been on the wall for a while now concerning Sergio Perez. Though he won’t be driving in 2025, he will retain some kind of role within the Red Bull Racing family.

Read next: Revealed: The race that set Sergio Perez on path to Red Bull exit