I think Perez will do great but I do feel for poor Albon. What does a contract actually mean in F1?
Well, I assume it means he gets a nice little buyout or some other kind of pre-agreed upon concession if the team decides to not follow through on their commitment. I know next to nothing about sport "over there", but over here in the US, in the "stick & ball" realm, it's very common for fans of a team to be well versed in the details of their team's coach/manager's buyout clause. It's especially common in college football and basketball, which at the top level are big money makers and so pay their coaches handsomely with long(ish) term contracts to assure potential recruits that the coach will be there for all 4-5 yrs of their university career...that is, until the school decides the coach is underperforming and ends up "buying out" the coach's contract early in the form of a massive cash payout per the stipulations of the contract.
It's all kind of goofy but, as a previous manager of mine told me, "everything is negotiable". When big money is on the line in a tightly competitive environment (such is the case with F1), a contract is really just a point-in-time artifact representative of the respective negotiating leverage of the two parties. Superficially, it looks like an agreement for the team to allow the driver to drive X number of years but, in reality, it's just as much (if not more) about the fine print (buyout clauses, etc).
As far as the Perez/Albon switcheroo goes, it's all very "F1", I think. I don't mean that in a good or bad sense...just a statement of fact. Max drubbed Albon pretty thoroughly. I'm not sure anyone (other than Albon's immediate family, perhaps!) was particularly surprised by that. I suspect Max would drub just about any teammate, short of maybe Lewis or Alonso. Albon seems like a genuinely nice guy and is probably an OK driver...but an "OK" driver in that seat is going to be treated to watching Max drive off into the distance race after race. That brings us to Perez. I think he deserves to be in an F1 seat one way or another, but my suspicion is he is "good, not great". A "good" driver in that seat is going to be treated to watching Max drive off into the distance at a marginally slower rate than the "OK" driver did.
So, good bye nice guy Albon - sorry it didn't work out...welcome back good-but-not-great Checo - glad to see your F1 dreams being extended for at least a little while...meanwhile, Max is still very fast...and Red Bull? Well, Red Bull are still wielding the impressive power and leverage of being the owners of two of the most coveted seats in all of motorsport and will continue to behave accordingly (subtext: don't get too comfy, Checo - definitely don't delete any of the IndyCar contacts you may have drummed up lately from your cell phone's address book).
but he makes up for it on track.
