Formula 1: What we cannot ignore about Sergio Perez’s success

Sergio Perez has been the “best of the rest” throughout the 2020 Formula 1 season, and he has a chance to take fourth place in the standings despite missing two races.

Entering the Turkish Grand Prix at Intercity Istanbul Park, Racing Point’s Sergio Perez hadn’t finished in second place in a Formula 1 race since the 2012 Italian Grand Prix at Autodromo Nazionale Monza when he was competing for Sauber.

But he changed that in this 58-lap race around the 14-turn, 3.317-mile (5.338-kilometer) road course in Tuzla, Turkey after a duel with Ferrari teammates Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc in the final few corners on the race’s final lap.

As a result, Perez has taken the lead in the unofficial “best of the rest” driver standings behind Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas as well as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, the three drivers who have found themselves inside the top three more often than not this season.

But here’s what you have to remember about Perez as the 2020 Formula 1 season comes to a close.

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In addition to being the only driver aside from Hamilton, who secured his seventh career world championship by winning this race, to score points in all of his starts so far this season, Perez finds himself in fourth place in the standings through 14 of 17 races despite having endured a handicap.

The 30-year-old Mexican missed two races this season, the two races at Silverstone Circuit, after testing positive for COVID-19. So he is sitting in fourth place in the driver standings with 100 points as the current “best of the rest” behind the Mercedes duo and Verstappen, despite the fact that everybody else, save for teammate Lance Stroll, who missed one race, has competed in two additional races.

Notably, his career-best finishes in the standings are his seventh place results from 2016 and 2017, and his career-high point total of 101 came in the 21-race 2016 campaign.

He is on pace to shatter both despite this having been a shortened season and despite him having missed multiple races.

His lead for this unofficial “best of the rest” title is just three points over Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (100 to 97) and four points over Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo (100 to 96).

But because he has scored 100 points in just 12 races compared to the 14 in which Leclerc and Ricciardo have competed, Perez has averaged 8.33 points per race in his 12 starts this season, which is significantly higher than Leclerc’s average of 6.93 and Ricciardo’s average of 6.86.

Unfortunately for Perez, he does not have a ride lined up for next year, as he is set to be replaced by Vettel, presumably alongside Stroll, at Racing Point, which are set to be rebranded as Aston Martin.

But as if teams needed any more data to justify hiring him, the season he has had in 2020 illustrates that it would be a travesty for arguably the greatest non-winner in Formula 1 history to be without a ride in 2021.