Perez to take six-month sabbatical before deciding on F1 return attempt

Axed Pink Bull driver Sergio Perez will take a minimum of six months off racing in 2025 earlier than deciding whether or not he’ll even try to make a System 1 comeback.

Perez’s F1 profession was delivered to a sudden halt on the finish of the 2024 season when Pink Bull determined to pay him not race within the upcoming marketing campaign after his prolonged string of poor performances final season.

These culminated in Pink Bull lacking the 2024 constructors’ championship title to go together with Max Verstappen’s fourth consecutive drivers’ crown – claimed within the different RB20 – and the group finally determined not to go ahead with Perez’s two-year contract extension and as a substitute promote Liam Lawson in his place.

In his first public feedback since Pink Bull and Perez reached the settlement in mid-December 2024 which implies he’ll spend the approaching interval on the F1 sidelines, Perez mentioned, “issues will are available in their very own time” relating to his racing future.

“Within the subsequent six months I’ll decide on what’s subsequent for my profession,” added Perez, who was talking on the Feria de Leon occasion within the Mexican state of state of Guanajuato.

“I’m completely comfortable, and I’ll return to System 1 if that’s what makes me happiest.”

Perez had insisted all through the tip of the 2024 F1 season that he would honour his aspect of his anticipated take care of Pink Bull – a hardball negotiating tactic to make sure he would obtain a payoff to not race in 2025.

He subsequently mentioned he was additionally proud that he “by no means gave up” in in the course of the run of races that adopted his now irrelevant contract extension, which was signed early final summer time.

“The necessary factor is that I by no means gave up,” Perez mentioned. “Every time one thing troublesome occurred in my profession higher issues got here and that was as a result of I by no means gave up.

“I am very enthusiastic about what’s to come back this 12 months and I am very calm and really comfortable.

“I’m actually having fun with my youngsters, my household, my pals. I’m lastly going to journey, as a result of in these years I travelled everywhere in the world, however with out understanding it”.

If Perez doesn’t obtain an F1 return in 2026 – his Pink Bull exit coming in spite of everything the opposite seats for the upcoming marketing campaign had already been stuffed – he’ll finish his profession within the class with six wins and three poles from 281 begins.

Pink Bull has beforehand mentioned Perez will “nonetheless be concerned with the model and the group” – per group boss Christian Horner – in an off-track capability, though this seems but to take form as he was not sporting group equipment on the Leon pageant.