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After signing for McLaren, Perez has taken a few things for granted it seems.

Before the deal, Perez was outshining many drivers on the grid with his great drives but after he signed on the dotted line for Mclaren, he has become complacent. Not only is he struggling to finish in the points but he also announced that Gutierrez will replace him before Sauber making an official announcement.

I believe he doesn't have the right. He didn't suggest or predict but claimed. Everyone knows that Gutierrez would probably replace Kobayashi but when it comes to announcements or things similar, there is a certain protocol to be followed.

At 1 point of time, it looked real probable for Sauber to overtake Mercedes in the WCC standings but it seems now that Perez doesn't want to fight for it as his approach towards racing with Sauber seems to have gotten a little casual more off late. It seems he is trying to push his luck.

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I personally think he has become a bit cocky cuz he made it into a big team and the fact that he is backed up by the worlds richest man which is a very very big deal for someone so young.

It's a game changer to have Slim behind you.

When it comes to formal announcements, I believe the team has to make those & not the driver.

Next year, he better up his game because Whitmarsh had said that Perez will feel a lot of pressure to perform well.

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Always S(mile)!
Unlike Uday!

PF1 Pick 10 Competition
Best Results: 1st with highest ever score of 225 (India 2012) & 2nd (Silverstone 2012)
Recipient of : Rosberg's Chinese Getaway Trophy

Fame gets to your head!!! His performance has been disappointing since mclaren anouncement and i guess he is just trying to pass the time till next year without giving 100%. And if he does not up his game next year, jenson will kick perez's ass!!

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KIMI: Yeah,Winning feels good.But I am not the type of guy to jump up and down and rub it in everyone's face.

He does seem to have fallen off the radar since the announcement.

Hopefully he can re-focus for the season ahead...

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Should I grow a beard?

I never thought perez was anything special, personally i thought he got lucky with the tyre strategy earlier in the year which was a result of his poor qualifying anyway, and for the last 3 races where the tyres have been durable and the drivers have been able to go flat out and not nurse the tyres the whole race perez has been exposed, i think button will easily beat him in qualy and races, and for Gutierrez i expect hulkenberg to humiliate him next year.

He has been taking a bit more risks but now maybe under more pressure. He is joining a winning team, a team that has been in F1 longer then most of us have been alive. So many greats have sat in the cockpit of a Mclaren.

Pressure is something people have to deal with and it is there, the only way you can get over it is if you have already won.

We shall see what Perez can do, although I feel sorry for him. If he doesnt do well people will blame him, if Button blows him away people will say Perez is not all that. What if Button was happy with the car like he was in Australia? - the one where he fairly beat Lewis and even on Quali was right behind him. And we all know what Lewis is capable of.

In the end we can only wait.

I think the relationship between Perez and Sauber is quite acrimonious at the moment. Listening to the pit radio after the race in Austin, the engineer was very unhappy with Sergei.

I think Perez has been a bit lazy since signing with McLaren, has taken his foot off the accelerator.

pay driver mentality...............

his fault that sauber cant wrap up 5th.....

I thought Hulkenberg replaced Perez? as far as im concerned, if Gutierrez gets a drive it will be to replace kobayashi........unfortunately.

No doubt about it, Perez has/had immense potential but so do several others on the grid. He's definately not yet in the "something special" category, but who knows if this will happen in time.

Some might say that Macca have taken a monumental risk in taking him on so quickly. Ferrari certainly seem to have this thought. But this ignores the bigger picture. They had Lewis walking out of the door and very few options to replace him. The prospect of getting hold of some of Carlos Slim's money next year or 2014 must have been a big factor, especially if Vodafone are going to walk out of the door as rumoured.

Button is already saying that he expects to be happier with next year's car. Maybe this suggests that it is going to be built more around his style than Hamilton's (or worse, the halfway house that performed so poorly mid-season). I expect Jenson to be de-facto team leader and Perez to have to haul himself up and into the limelight. If he is as good as Hamilton was in his year with Alonso we will see the results very quickly. If he is just one of the pack, expect him to have some stellar performances but much of his season will see him knocking lumps off the middle of the field. In effect, it will be a re-run of 2012.

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Me Like - Button, Hamilton, Webber, Rosberg
Over rated, over paid - Räikkönen, Alonso, Vettel. Schumacher
Disappointing - Massa, Kobayashi
I may be wrong about - Alonso

What did he say?

But yes, Perez seems to have dropped the ball. Button will destroy him unless he gets his focus back to 100%

The announcement was supposed to have been made in Austin anyway. Sauber delayed until Brazil for some reason.

As for Perez well it could have just been a slip of the tongue and too late to rectify after he'd said it. What he said about Kobayashi on his twitter was very sincere and respectful.

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It's actually more how he says it rather than what he says, but you can listen to it here, at the 12:42 mark:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xv7bz9_usa-12-r_auto

IMO the lack of results in last races is more due him taking to many risks and trying to push too hard on races, so he has been too greedy on overtakes as you can see a failed overtake over Hamilton in Japan (which was more a result of hamilton´s experince to avoid being passed in the same turn for a second time) and Di Resta in Abu Dhabi, other than that he has outqualified Koba in last 4 races and his race pace is deffinitely stronger compared with his team mate. On the other hand, Sauber seem to have fallen in the upgrades compared with other midfield teams such as Force India and Williams and for now even STR is getting really close in terms of car performance, not to mention Sauber has had some terrible pit calls, ruining both races in Abu Dhabi ( Where he should have come out of pits in front of Di Resta/Grossjean ) and he could have reached 3th or 4th in the race. and USA where they called him 3 laps late and lost too many places and all points possibility (with a decent pit call he could have easily reached 7th). So looking closer instead of just judging by the cold numbers, I don´t see he has lost too much in terms of performance and I can also see team is not working very wisely around him.

Two drivers are replacing two other drivers.
If one is going to be seen as a 'direct' replacement for another, then surely Gutierrez for Perez as the replacement Telmex driver is surely the more obviously conclusion?

No if Hulk was announced after only Perez had been confirmed as leaving of course it means Hulk has Perez's seat!

Gutierrez will now replace Kobi

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Multi 21 or Catch 22?!

It ain't hating just 'cause it's not love

Perez already had flashes of "look at me, my uncle is rich" behaviour before (though his sponsor is not his uncle anyway). His humor attempt was rather poor perhaps even slightly racist considering that there are virtually no blondes in his country: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc0Kvkm2n6I

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The end is near

Does it matter? Strictly speaking Kobi is replaced by Hulk as I imagine Hulk will take Kobi's higher numbered car and Gutierrez will replace Perez is the lower numbered one.

It doesn't mean that at all.
Gutierrez is Telmex's choice as replacement for Perez. Sergio said as much himself, so did Slim.
Perez and Gutierrez are both Telmex drivers, they don't care about Kobayashi and Hulkenburg, only the two Mexicans. Therefore, as one Telmex driver is leaving and another is coming in the fulfill Telmex's wishes, one replaces the other.

Sergei Perezov has been lazy since putting pen to McLaren paper. It's almost like he feels he still needs to prove more and is taking too many risks. The Hulk on the other hand has carried on as per normal and Hamilton has remained constant or improved since his. The look on Ron Dennis's face at the Perez Pic crash in FP3 at Austin summed it up to me - "please tell me this isn't what we've signed up for, why didn't we try harder with Lewis?"

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"We can not drive slower, just to make the races more exciting." Alain Prost

He is just being Mexican :p

I don't think thats too harsh considering she pretty much embarrassed him by not knowing who he was lol

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A man exists for only a lifetime, a name lasts until the end of time.

Feel a bit sorry for Perez, he seems to be a nice guy, but if Mclaren is the right thing for him?

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"Everything you can imagine is real." Pablo Picasso

There are blondes in Mexico.

Well, let's face it, RD was responsible for losing LH by calling his bluff... and well... he lost one of the top three talents on the grid.

As for Perez, we'll have to wait and see, the fact is unless he shines at Macca then his future is little more than bank-rolling mid to bottom tier teams for the rest of his career.

On the other hand, while hi slack of consistency is an issue, look at Kobayashi. What has he done to make his team-mate look bad?

Bottom line is that Perez delivered a couple of remarkable results in a car which his team-mate, a reasonably respected, experienced driver has never come close to achieving. It is quite possible that had Sauber been slightly more aggressive he would have won a GP this year - something that his team-mate has never come close to achieving. Perez is gamble for Macca, but there were no proven world class drivers available anyway... he has money behind him and without question he has a fair degree of talent. He has more to lose than Macca next year if he is ever to be considered as hard working, ambitious, dedicated.

Personally, I suspect he will beat Button convincingly.... (famous last word etc )

I think it's natural to become a bit cocky, when you get a contract by such a big team, at a young age. It happened to Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton, Schumacher and many more drivers.

I think Perez is perhaps just being a bit over-enthusiastic given that he's secured his long-term future at a top team. He's taking more gambles because he knows he can't lose anything if he fails right now. I'm sure he will adjust his approach next year given the differing circumstances. After all, he nade virtually no mistakes earlier on in the year. I'm sure he is up to it given that he has experienced an awful lot for a driver in his second year.

The important thing is he has not lost the pace. If anything, he is outpacing Kobayashi much more convincingly now than before he signed for McLaren. Perez has outqualified Koba at all of the last 4 races and was running ahead of him in 3 of those races (Koba crashed on the first lap at the other race, in Korea) so we know that he has the speed and that he has also shown the speed to win in Malaysia, Canada and Monza.

I would not be at all surprised to see Perez beat Button next year. I'm absolutely thrilled, as his potential was worthy of a top seat with equal opportunities, which I suspect he wouldn't have had at Ferrari.

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I don't follow F1 so I don't know what I'm talking about

I feel bad for F1 drivers, they always have idiots like OP running them down no matter what they do. He slipped up in saying Gutierrez was the driver, it was a mistake, it has nothing to do with being "cocky" or taking things for granted. About his form, I think you're missing two things:

1) a lot of his issues have been related to pushing too hard, meaning he's trying to impress. If anything, the pressure is getting to him that he's going to a team that expects results and that's causing him some issues. How is that taking his drive for granted? If anything it shows that he wants to strive to meet macca's best intention but, as the saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

2) Sauber, Williams, FI, Torro Rosso, all of these teams almost always get worse as the season goes on because they don't have the same funds to keep round-the-clock development throughout the season, like Ferrari, Macca, Renault, Red Bull, etc. do. That's why he's slipping to the back when he was getting podiums; if you actually have any sense about F1 you'd know it's completely unrealistic to believe a team like Sauber will be as strong at the end of a season as they are at the start.

Get over it. The kid hasn't even stepped foot in a Macca and already people are trying to place him in a neat little box where they can characterize him and hate him for their own characterization of him.

First post I've seen of yours and I like you already!

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Multi 21 or Catch 22?!

It ain't hating just 'cause it's not love

We will see how he goes. How can anyone show how good, or otherwise, they are, without opportunity. Good luck to him.

I never said there is not a single blonde in Mexico. But their number is irrelevantly small.

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The end is near

No it's not irrelevant, it depends on the location but definitely there are way more than a few

Not at all. Perez will be a pretty darn good driver for Mclaren. I think its just the fact of people wanting to manipulate things and now that Sauber's performance has deflated a bit and R&D being limited compared to the big boys. It happens every year and I was not surprised by it. Perez will do a good job and we still have to wait to see how he performs alongside Button, so lets not jump to conclusions about him. Its going to be a lot of pressure on him from day one at winter testing. All of us need to be patient about it.

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Felipe Massa fan/supporter since 2002 and counting!

Perez taking things for granted? I think the opposite is true. He is trying too hard to prove himself.

Most people who play sport of any kind know that if you feel you need to perform, say fight for your place in a team, or catch up from behind, it is so easy to overdo it just that little and seem to be a bad player.

I think this is his downfall. Rather than be pleased he has done well in a mid car, he has to 'show' he is worthy of a step to a top car

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I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

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In any case, what Checo said could be labeled as sexist, not racist. Last time I checked "blonde" is not a race.

So blonde is a gender?

Isn't blond used for boys and blonde for girls?

Mate, whatever, the point is this, what he said was quite telling about his character. He basically holds stereotypes that blondes are to be estimated low, and it came out just because a blonde didn't recognized him that he is a F1 driver. Does everyone that comes to watch races has to recognize every driver, else they should be labeled as "typical blonde"?

Being a high profiled sportsman, you have no business speaking like that. That's the point.

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The end is near

It was a joke, get over it