Perez job in jeopardy as Red Bull boss refuses to confirm Mexican driver will finish F1 season

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Sergio Perez climbed into his car for the Mexico City Grand Prix as nearly 155,000 fans at his home race shouted “Checo! Checo! Checo!" in adoration of the wildly popular Formula 1 driver.

It was a critical race for the slumping Perez — he said repeatedly all weekend it is his favorite event of the year — and he knows his job is in danger because of his lack of performance.

Alas, Perez could not deliver for his hopeful fans or for Red Bull Racing. After a 17th-place finish Sunday, team principal Christian Horner would not guarantee Perez will finish the season.

Horner had been emphatic two days earlier that the contract extension Perez signed earlier this year was valid for 2025. But he has performance clauses in his existing contract, and when The Associated Press asked Horner directly if Perez would finish this season, Horner refused to endorse the driver for the final four races.

“There comes a point in time that difficult decisions have to be made,” Horner said. “We’re now third in the constructors championship.”

Horner did say Perez would be in the car next weekend in Brazil.

Horner admitted the Mexican “had a horrible weekend” that started when he was eliminated in the first round of Saturday qualifying, relegating him to an 18th-place starting position. Perez was then outside his box at the start and received a five-second penalty.

He later got into a wheel-to-wheel battle with Liam Lawson of Red Bull sister team RB, and the contact caused damage that made Perez's car uncompetitive.

A win by Carlos Sainz moved Ferrari ahead of Red Bull for second in the lucrative constructor standings and the two-time reigning champions of the prize that pays an estimated $150 million is now a longshot to win it for the third consecutive year.

Red Bull's slip in that category is largely because of Perez's failures. He's eighth in the standings, winless on the year, and crashed out of three races.

“He knows Formula 1 is a results-based business, and you know, inevitably, when you’re not delivering, then the spotlight is firmly on,” Horner said. “When anyone is underperforming, there is always going to be scrutiny on that. You know, as a team, we need to have both (drivers) scoring points.”

Max Verstappen has scored 362 points this season; Perez has scored just 150.

“We’re working with him as hard as we can to try and support him," Horner said. "We’ve done everything that we can to support Checo, and we’ll continue to do so in Brazil next weekend. But there comes a point in time that you can only do so much.”

Perez, although disappointed with his weekend, didn't sound like a driver worried about his job.

“This has been a complicated weekend," he said. "I always say it’s my dream to win the grand prix in Mexico and I’ll try again next year. After all of the support from all of these fans, it’s incredible. They have given me so much, it’s all worth it for them. We’ll try again for them next year stronger.”

His future — or lack of one in F1 — could be a problem for the Mexico City race, which heads into the final year of its current contract seeking an extension. The race this weekend drew a record 404,958 spectators and was sold out for the ninth consecutive year.

But many of the fans who attend come to see Perez, and attendance could slip if he or another Mexican driver isn't on the F1 grid. Event president Alejandro Soberón said tickets for this weekend went on sale two weeks after Perez crashed out of last year's race seconds after it started and still sold out in two hours.

Tickets for 2025 will again go on sale in two weeks, and it is unclear if Perez's status for next year will be determined even though Horner had been adamant Friday he was under contract for 2025.

Soberon believes the race will have high demand.

“There’s very few races who have a local driver. Everybody of course would love to have a local driver, but the first year we did the race here 50% of the fans were in a red T-shirt, so Ferrari has a wonderful following here," he said. "We have no more capacity. We could have drawn 600,000 if we had unlimited capacity, we could have another 200,000 here, but we cannot put them.

“That’s why it sold out so fast in one year in advance. Probably without Checo maybe a drop of 20%, 25%, naturally, (but) still would be a sellout.”

Soberón also said the Mexico City Grand Prix is so unique — it embraces the Mexican culture and incorporates it in the paddock and throughout the venue — and is a destination race for F1 fans outside of the country. He noted that the event is a boon for the local economy, with everything from hotels, restaurants and transportation services fully booked all week.

“The Mexican crowd, the fandom, is very strong for F1 in general. Obviously, Checo is a great enhancement for this,” he said. "But Mexico has been very close to the heart of F1. We have a much better show on track today to what we had five years ago. I think competition and quality of the spectacle at the track is going to be enough to sustain the interest of the crowd, so we as a promoter of the race, we’re very excited trying to figure out a way to extend our (F1) contract regardless of Checo.

“We’re fairly optimistic that we’re going to have a race for many, many years."

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Fans of Red Bull driver Sergio Perez, from Mexico, attend a promotional event by sponsors in Mexico City, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024, ahead of the weekend Formula One Mexico Grand Prix auto race. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Red Bull driver Sergio Perez of Mexico looks up during a press conference at Hermanos Rodriguez racetrack ahead of the Formula One Mexico Grand Prix in Mexico City, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

A fan of Red Bull driver Sergio Perez poses for photos with a Mexican flag during the third free practice ahead of the Formula One Mexico Grand Prix auto race at the Hermanos Rodriguez racetrack in Mexico City, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Fans cheer for Red Bull driver Sergio Perez of Mexico and Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz of Spain before the start of the Formula One Mexico Grand Prix auto race at the Hermanos Rodriguez racetrack in Mexico City, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Red Bull driver Sergio Perez of Mexico leaves the pits during the third free practice ahead of the Formula One Mexico Grand Prix auto race at the Hermanos Rodriguez racetrack in Mexico City, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands, right, and teammate Sergio Perez of Mexico greet spectators before the Formula One Mexico Grand Prix auto race at the Hermanos Rodriguez racetrack in Mexico City, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)