Franco Colapinto was a thorn in Sergio Perez’s side in Singapore

Praising Franco Colapinto’s defending in Singapore, Robert Doornbos believes Sergio Perez named the driver who is “going to steal” his Red Bull seat.

Perez suffered an anonymous weekend at the Marina Bay street circuit where the 2022 winner failed to make it out of Q2 before scrapping to a single point in 10th place.

Sergio Perez warned Franco Colapinto could ‘steal your seat’

On a day when his team-mate Max Verstappen brought his RB20 home in second place, a distant second but still second, Perez was lapped by race winner Lando Norris have spent almost 30 laps stuck behind the rear wing of rookie driver Colapinto’s FW46.

In only his third Grand Prix, the replacement driver kept Perez at bay and frustrated that Mexican driver who said over the radio: “He’s very good, difficult to pass.”

Perez did eventually take the position but he had to do it in the pits by using the undercut.

“He did a fantastic race,” he said of Colapinto. “He didn’t put a foot wrong. In the end we managed to do the undercut on him, but that was the only one we could do.”

Doornbos reckons Perez may have been praising the driver who could boot him out of the Red Bull.

“Sergio Perez gets one,” Doornbos said of Perez’s Singapore Grand Prix to Ziggo Sport.

“I really do wish Checo well, but he says in the race that Franco Colapinto is doing incredibly well, and that he can’t overtake him. He’s in his fourteenth season himself.

“That guy is just going to steal your seat, if you’re not careful.

“He’s only digging the hole deeper for himself. That doesn’t give the outside world a good image.

“His entire season is one big one-off. It’s just a really bad weekend if you finish tenth in a Red Bull. He’s just not consistent enough. You can’t rely on him.”

Williams open to Colapinto joining a rival team in 2025

Colapinto is without a drive for next season as the Argentinian was only promoted by Williams for the final nine races of 2024 when the team made the call to replace the Logan Sargeant.

Colapinto, a Williams junior, has already done what Sargeant could not go as he scored four points in Azerbaijan to help Williams overhaul Alpine for ninth place in the Constructors’ Championship.

But with the team having already signed Carlos Sainz as Alex Albon’s 2025 team-mate, the 21-year-old will likely be on the sidelines as a Williams reserve next season or return to Formula 2.

Williams team boss James Vowles has said he’s open to Colapinto joining a rival team with the driver linked to the vacant Audi seat.

“What I’ve already said is he is a racing driver, and I think he’s already demonstrated in just a few races that he belongs on the grid,” he said in Singapore.

“What we’ve already said is we’re very open-minded. We’re waiting, in that circumstance, for Audi or Sauber to come to us and say, ‘what do you want, what are you interested in?’ And from there, we can then discuss what it actually means as an implication. But the first stage is more an open discussion.”