Mexican F1 organisers say Perez not key for future success

MEXICO CITY :Mexico City Grand Prix organisers are confident their Formula One race will remain a sell-out success even once hugely popular local hero Sergio Perez has left the scene.

Perez, 34, is Mexico's most successful Formula One driver but by his own admission has had a 'terrible season' with Red Bull in danger of losing their constructors' crown largely due to his lack of form.

While championship-leading team mate Max Verstappen has scored 354 points, Perez's tally from the same 19 races has been a mere 150 and there is increasing speculation he could be out at the end of the season.

He qualified only 18th on Saturday at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

The Mexican round, which returned to the calendar in 2015, has had capacity crowds for all nine editions to date.

"The Mexican crowd, the fandom in Mexico, is very strong for Formula One in general, and obviously Checo (Perez) is a great enhancement for this," Mexico City Grand Prix president Alejandro Soberon told reporters on Saturday.

"But Mexico had been very, very close in their heart to Formula One, so we have a much better show on track today (compared to) what we had five years ago.

"I think competition and quality of the spectacle in the track is going to be enough to sustain the interest in the crowd."

Soberon said it was also not a given that Perez's career was about to end.

He pointed out that the driver lasted only 90 seconds of last year's race after a first corner collision but tickets for this year's grand prix still sold out in two hours when they went on sale 15 days later.

Soberon said demand was such that organisers could have sold 200,000 more tickets than the 400,000 capacity - meaning that even a 20 per cent drop in people applying would still