MEXICO CITY — With his son watching on, arms draped on the right-hand side of the podium at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Sergio Pérez soaked in the adulation of his home fans.

Even though Max Verstappen had won the race for Red Bull, third-placed Pérez drew the crowd’s focus after scoring his first Mexican Grand Prix podium. While it was his fifth podium of the 2021 season, it was the first time a Mexican driver had achieved such a result at home, making it a significant result for both him and his country.

Three years on, things have changed dramatically.

Pérez remains the star in Mexico. This remains his weekend, his face adorning billboards all over the city as brands and sponsors look to cash in on his stardom. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner joked that Pérez was “endorsing every product from Uber Eats to toilet roll this weekend.”

But right now, through a rotten run of form that has caused him to slump to eighth in the world championship, another podium finish would carry even more weight for Pérez.

“I know I’ve had a terrible season, a very difficult one,” Pérez admitted on Thursday. “It started really well, but it’s been really, really difficult. If I get a strong result, it can definitely change my season massively in terms of (my) personal feelings.”

Pérez arrives in Mexico without a podium finish since the Chinese Grand Prix in April. A season that started with so much promise, with Red Bull looking a step ahead of its rivals, quickly unraveled as he struggled with the car. A lack of balance that robbed the drivers of confidence this year only bit Max Verstappen toward the end of the European season. It hurt Pérez far earlier.

The resulting downturn in form put Pérez’s future in the spotlight. Red Bull saw its early-year advantage ebb away as McLaren, aided by two high-scoring drivers in Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, reeled it in and eventually overhauled it at the top of the constructors’ championship. While Verstappen has maintained a decent buffer at the head of the drivers’ standings, Red Bull is now at risk of also slipping behind Ferrari — only eight points behind — to P3. That would be its lowest constructors’ finish since 2019.

Even ahead of Mexico, Pérez felt the need to respond to rumors that he might announce his plan to retire from F1 altogether at his home race. During the three-week break after Singapore, he posted a video clip from “The Wolf of Wall Street” where Leonardo di Caprio’s character, Jordan Belfort, confidently tells his workforce words to the extent of, “I’m not leaving.”

Sorry 😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/rPIHpYDVGH

— Sergio Pérez (@SChecoPerez) September 29, 2024

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“I just felt like it’s been every year, for the last two years or so, that someone creates this rumor and then everyone picks it up,” Pérez explained in Austin last week when asked about the post. “All my fans, obviously I’m very conscious that there are a lot of people coming to support me, to the Mexican Grand Prix, and they probably might be expecting something that is not true.

“I felt the need to just say, look, I think it’s just not correct to spread rumors like this without knowing the facts.”

The frequency of those rumors is because of the scrutiny placed on Pérez’s underperformance and future despite his being under contract for the next two seasons. His renewal was intended to give him stability at a time when his form was slipping, acting as an extra arm around the shoulder—proof that he had the team’s support.

It failed to have the desired effect. Pérez still has not finished inside the top five since the deal was announced shortly before the Canadian Grand Prix. He was in contention for the podium in Azerbaijan last month, only for a late clash with Carlos Sainz to end his race.

On Friday, Horner agreed with Pérez’s assessment that his season had been “terrible,” saying the Mexican had “summed it up perfectly.”

“It’s been a bad year for Checo,” Horner said. “He started strongly, and obviously, he struggled for form since Imola onwards. It’s been sporadic. We saw flashes of performance. (In) Azerbaijan, arguably he could have won that race almost a month ago.

“We know what he’s capable of. We’re hoping we can give him the setup and confidence in the car to extract the kind of performances we know he’s capable of.”

Verstappen’s deepening struggles over the summer races indicated that Pérez was not solely to blame for his drop in form. The upgrades that arrived in Austin helped ease some of Verstappen’s concerns, but Pérez — who qualified ninth and finished only seventh — didn’t have the full package. “We just didn’t get a good weekend,” he reflected in Mexico. “It wasn’t a good weekend where I built a lot of confidence.”

Confidence is something that Red Bull has long sought to try and re-instill in Pérez as it looks toward 2025. “Checo’s our driver,” Horner said. “He’s contracted for 2025. He’s competitive. He’s hungry. He’s not happy with where he currently is. So, as a team, we’re doing our very best to support him.”

Horner was asked how Liam Lawson’s performances at RB might impact the plan across the two Red Bull teams, given the links for him to potentially replace Pérez in case of a change at Red Bull. Horner reiterated that Pérez “has a contract for next year, so he’s currently our driver for 2025.”

“There is a seat available at RB, and they’re all Red Bull racing drivers that are on loan,” Horner said. “We have the benefit of time to sit down with Laurent (Mekies) and Peter (Bayer) and look at all the options.”

The fan adoration for Pérez in Mexico City is boundless. (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

If there was one race of the remaining five where the energy of the event and the crowd could provide an extra boost of energy to fuel Pérez, it’s Mexico. The intensity of the race weekend is like nothing else he experiences in F1. He described it as being “like three races at once.” The noise from the grandstands on his first outlap at the start of FP1 was greater than most drivers will hear in their honor all season, such is the excitement of the 100,000-plus Mexicans who are packed into the circuit, the majority bursting into color and noise in the Foro Sol stadium section.

The demands of racing at home do make for a taxing week. Yet it takes nothing away from how special the grand prix is for him. “I just want to enjoy it,” he said in Austin. “This is my ninth grand prix in Mexico, so I just want to make sure that I enjoy every single bit of it, because it’s a very important one.”

The only noise Pérez wants to hear this weekend is from the grandstands. The constant speculation and discussions about his future? He’s not bothered. “You just have to make sure you keep your head down, you focus on the stuff that you can control,” Pérez said. “The rest is something that you cannot get bothered with.”

Ending his podium drought on home soil would be a perfect way for Pérez to dismiss some of the question marks over his future at Red Bull. It would also give him the chance for another priceless moment, like the one with his son three years ago.

“That moment will stay with me forever, having my son up there with me on the podium, watching me,” Pérez said. “It’s something that I hope he remembers forever. If not, I’ll have the picture at least to show him when he’s older!

“Those moments, I think, are the ones that really matter to me. And I hope I can repeat that this weekend.”

Remembering when Sergio Perez’s son got to see his father on the podium at his home Grand Prix 💚🇲🇽

(via rsanchezp/IG) pic.twitter.com/tsFzL1JMHu

— ESPN F1 (@ESPNF1) July 12, 2022

Top photo: Mark Thompson/Getty Images