How early struggles and Red Bull rejection equipped Perez for F1’s top team

Sergio Perez picks up a pen and begins circling cities on a map of Mexico GP Racing has brought to the interview. “We went here, we went here,” he mutters, quickly filling the country with circles.

When he was little, Perez travelled all across Mexico from one kart track to another, together with his father and older brother – also a racing driver, who found success in the Mexican NASCAR series.

“From here to here,” Perez first points to his native Guadalajara and then Monterrey, “that was a 24-hour drive.”

GP Racing delicately observes that the two points on the map aren’t that far apart.

“We just drove in a motorhome and it stopped halfway through, because we had a water leak, so it just took us a bit longer,” he laughs. “I was around 12 years old, and I didn’t even race that weekend. I just went to watch my brother.”

Perez hails from a genuine racing family. His father Antonio Perez Garibay was a driver manager back in Mexico, so both his sons grew up surrounded by racing drivers.

“We knew everyone on track, off track, so we had good friends around,” he says. “It was great fun, you know, we just enjoyed [travelling together], stopping on the motorways to eat some tacos. It was a very enjoyable time. Yeah, we were all very happy just going racing.

Perez had a difficult adaption to racing in Europe at first, arriving in Germany's Formula BMW championship in 2005

Photo by: Lyndon McNeil

“It’s very different, racing in Europe versus racing in Mexico. It’s much more relaxed, and everyone is much more friendly. There are a lot of friendships. I guess, also, when you come to Europe, and the series are more professional, things get more serious.”

Perez wasn’t a typical Mexican driver. By the time his father dropped him off at Toluca Airport – after a six-hour drive – with a one-way ticket to Germany, Mexico had already begun to forget about Formula 1. It had hosted its last grand prix when Perez was two years old, and nearly a quarter of a century had elapsed since a Mexican last started a world championship F1 race (Hector Rebaque in the 1981 Caesars Palace Grand Prix, to be precise).

“We only had drivers in IndyCar, which was the most common path there,” says Perez. But he, for some reason, always had his eyes only on F1 – despite the fact that a move to the USA was considered almost the only route for Mexican racers to make it to the top. Many tried to convince Perez that Formula 1 wasn’t for him.

"There was no money around to put someone else on the plane with me and, yeah, be with me [in Europe]. That would have been ideal, as I was quite young. But that wasn’t
 a possibility at the time" Sergio Perez

“Yeah, many people, of course, [were sceptical],” he says, “because for a Mexican to come into Europe, to open all the doors over here, it wasn’t going to be easy. But we tried, we gave our best.

“I always wanted to make my career in Europe. Because I believe that here are the best drivers. It’s obviously harder for a Latin [American] to be racing in Europe. But it is where the best drivers are.”

Harder than you think

It’s commonly believed Perez’s path to F1 was gilded with the money of Mexico’s richest businessman, and one of the planet’s wealthiest men, Carlos Slim Sr – but the man himself can only laugh at that. Yes, he knew Slim since childhood through his father, but it was still difficult to make the case for a move to Europe. For his first season in Formula BMW, Perez had a minimal budget and lived above a restaurant owned by the team boss.

Jimmy Morales, the Escuderia Telmex boss and a man who Perez names, right after Slim, as one of those who played one of the biggest roles in giving him a career, said in one interview that finding the $100,000 to send the youngster to Europe was harder than accumulating $10 million when he was already in F1.

“Yeah, because you were asking for a crazy thing,” Perez agrees. “Formula 1? No one knew about F1. And a kid asks for this level of money, for Mexico it was totally unusual.

Stumping up the cash to send Perez to Europe was a potential stumbling block

Photo by: FIA Pool

“Yeah, he [Morales] was a big supporter of me. Although he didn’t have much idea of how racing was in Europe, he gave his best with what we knew at the time.”

All Morales could help young Perez with was allocating money towards his European adventure from the Escuderia Telmex programme’s budget. Morales himself had won all the most prestigious local series, but never raced overseas.

“It was the only option basically to come on my own,” Perez recalls. “There was no money around to put someone else on the plane with me and, yeah, be with me [in Europe]. That would have been ideal, as I was quite young. But that wasn’t a possibility at the time.

“It was all new for us, as a country. I didn’t have anyone, it was just me and my family. And F1 was something super, super new. Not just for me, but for my whole country. So it was pretty hard to get any advice from anyone.

“People tend to think [I had everything I needed], but I had to work pretty hard to... to survive, basically, in Europe.

“I think the biggest thing was changing lives. You know, from one day to another one. Where I had a normal life in Mexico, I was 14 years old with my friends, with my family, to all of a sudden be on my own – totally on my own – for weeks in a country where I didn’t even speak the language, where the weather is very different. Where the culture is different. I mean, my life just turned around within a flight, 360 [degrees], and that was the hardest thing for me, the biggest shock I had.”

But despite having doubts about the viability of the whole trip across the ocean, Perez did stick it out in Europe.

“The opportunity I had, you know, looking at how hard it was to convince Carlos to get me to Europe,” he says. “I knew that if I were to go back [to Mexico] I would never be back [in Europe] again. So that was what really motivated me to stay.”

Perez earned his chance at Formula 1 after finishing second in the 2010 GP2 championship

Photo by: Clément Marin

A couple of years later Perez did get the chance to secure a major European benefactor – one Helmut Marko. But evaluation for the Red Bull young driver programme didn’t go well.

“It was [arranged] through Escuderia Telmex,” Perez recalls of his F3 test with Red Bull. “They invited us to do the test, somewhere in Portugal, I don’t remember where exactly. Basically these tests, it’s just to see who goes fastest over a lap. But that day, I remember, my seat wasn’t fitted properly, so I was hitting [the steering wheel] with my knees.

“I thought, OK, I do a run and then I adjust everything. But as I came back in, that was it! Basically it was only one run!”

"When I was going through my toughest time in F1, let’s say, you would expect people – especially people that were close to me – to come and tell me straight, instead of going to the media and criticising me while I was fighting for my career" Sergio Perez

A dozen years on from that inauspicious first encounter, Perez would remind Marko of this story as he signed his first Red Bull deal – now in F1.

“It was just, yeah, how it happened,” he says, sweeping an imaginary object off the table, “I didn’t get chosen for the programme. You know, it’s typical Helmut in that regard. If you don’t go as fast as you need to go it doesn’t matter why. So that’s pretty simple.”

The long road to proving himself

Since then Perez has proven quite a lot of people wrong. First, those who doubted you could make it to F1 from Mexico: having finished runner-up in the 2010 GP2 Series (now F2), he took a place on the F1 grid with Sauber. Also, those who doubted he could stay in F1 long-term.

And there were plenty of these doubters – even among people you might have expected to support Perez in his first great F1 career crisis, when he moved from Sauber to McLaren just as the Woking team’s form tanked.

Jo Ramirez, a childhood friend of Ricardo Rodriguez and one the most prominent Mexicans in F1 history thanks to a diverse career which included being Francois Cevert’s chief mechanic and McLaren’s team co-ordinator, was critical of Perez in the media for having a “wrong attitude” and “being arrogant”. It’s said that Perez and Ramirez didn’t speak for many years afterwards.

After a difficult spell with McLaren, Perez had to step back to Force India to re-invent his career

Photo by: Patrik Lundin / Motorsport Images

“I was disappointed in some ways,” Perez recalls, “because when I was going through my toughest time in F1, let’s say, you would expect people – especially people that were close to me – to come and tell me straight, instead of going to the media and criticising me while I was fighting for my career. But it’s also part of the sport. I don’t take anything personal. What happens here is just... it’s just part of the sport.”

After being ejected from McLaren, Perez also parted ways with manager (and former IndyCar driver) Adrian Fernandez, who had brokered the negotiations that left Perez with a one-year McLaren deal. It took several years for Perez to be reconciled with both Fernandez and Ramirez.

“I have no regrets with anyone, I moved on,” Perez says. “I think we all moved on. We all learn from our mistakes and yeah, life goes on. And life is much more than Formula 1 at the end of the day.”

Having taken the lifeline of a drive with Force India for 2014, Perez essentially rebooted his career. Team insiders describe the diligence with which he knuckled down to learning how better to manage such nuances as tyre degradation.

He began to shed his reputation for impetuousness, instead establishing himself as a consummate midfield poacher who could maximise a car’s potential and bring home whatever points were on the table. But when Lawrence Stroll’s consortium bought the team and then recruited Sebastian Vettel, a four-time champion, it looked like Perez’s time in F1 was up.

Then, in what might have been his penultimate GP, Perez scored an unlikely victory. After an accident on the opening lap of the 2020 Sakhir GP Perez was last, only to triumph in one of the most dramatic F1 races of the past few years.

“It just reminds you about your dream of becoming an F1 [driver], of having a successful career,” he says of that victory. “Winning in Formula 1, it’s something you want to know how it feels, you know? You don’t want anyone to tell you how it feels. And it was great. It was a great thing to achieve. It was also a crazy race. So that made it even more special.”

At that point he had no deal for the following year in place, and there seemed to be no vacancies. Perez admits now that he was ready for his F1 path to end: “It was my 10th or 11th season in F1. So it was really okay, if it was to end. I didn’t have much of a problem with it.”

Popular first victory came with Racing Point at 2020 Sakhir GP when his place in F1 was under threat

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

But that race helped finally sway Marko. It had taken almost a decade and a half for Perez to finally prove to Red Bull’s ‘driver advisor’ he was deserving of a place in the organisation – and he became the first driver in many years to book a place in the main Red Bull team without having been part of its junior programme.

“I guess that was the difference in taking someone from the outside to see how they adapt to the Red Bull philosophy,” Perez says. “Because Red Bull is a massive brand with a way of doing things very different to any other F1 team. So it’s not guaranteed someone who isn’t used to that approach will adapt to it.

“It has worked out well. I’m on my second season, and I’m gonna extend my career with them for another two years. So it’s gonna be a much longer journey than we first thought.”

Targeting a win at home - and the world title

This year Perez will arrive at the Mexican GP as the most successful local driver in F1 history – in virtually every statistic. His Monaco victory took him above Pedro Rodriguez as the Mexican with the most F1 wins, and he added to that tally with an outstanding victory in Singapore. And it would be no exaggeration to suggest Perez put his country back on the F1 map – because the return to Mexico City in 2015 wouldn’t have happened without him.

"It’s not easy to beat [Verstappen], but I’ve got to keep trying. I’ve got to keep improving. And I believe I can do it. I just have to make myself more comfortable" Sergio Perez

“I didn’t really think about it,” he says. “But it was just nice to see, since I came to F1, how much it has grown in our country. And now the younger generations. they all think about F1, which is great, because in my time I had no one in F1.”

While being popular and successful enough to bring a moribund grand prix circuit in your home country back to life and return it to the calendar is an achievement in itself, that isn’t what Perez set out to achieve. At Red Bull he has a competitive car at his disposal but also one of the most ferocious competitors on the grid in the garage next door. And Max Verstappen is also, indisputably, the team’s priority. Still, Perez hasn’t given up on his own ambitions.

“I want to achieve my biggest dream, which is to become a world champion before I head back home,” he says.

At the beginning of the season it appeared this unlikely-sounding scenario might actually play out, since he was much closer to Verstappen in terms of pace than he’d been in 2021.

Perez has won twice in 2022 and contributed to Red Bull scoring its first constructors title since 2013

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“Definitely,” Perez says when GP Racing asks if these early races led him to think he had a chance to fight for the title. “Because I was fairly comfortable. And I was as quick as anyone throughout the weekend, constantly. And things were coming naturally at the time, so yeah, it was certainly... I did feel like I was in the battle.”

This began to change as Red Bull developed the car, not just in terms of aerodynamic updates but also through a weight-loss programme which made it less prone to understeer. As a result, it became more to Verstappen’s liking and less to Perez’s. Hardly surprising since the team has been built around Verstappen for seven years now and the engineers naturally channel their efforts towards building a car that behaves as he wants it to.

“I think it’s part of how things go,” Perez explains. “Sometimes you bring upgrades to the car, and it just helps, sometimes you bring upgrades and you’re not as comfortable, but that’s just part of F1. You’re constantly evolving.”

“We cannot take anything away from Max. He’s extremely good, extremely talented. A very, very hard worker, and... he delivers when he has to, so there’s nothing to take away from it. But yeah, at the same time, having the whole team around him in that regard certainly helps.

“It’s not easy to beat him, but I’ve got to keep trying. I’ve got to keep improving. And I believe I can do it. I just have to make myself more comfortable, like I was in the beginning of the year. And I’ve shown I can do it.”

In any case, in his home race this year Perez will have F1’s best car at his disposal, since the RB18 has pulled clear of its rivals since the summer break. And for several years now Red Bull has been the team to beat in the thin air of Mexico City. Perez claimed a podium there last year and could now be in a position to challenge for the win. After all, the different circumstances of this year’s championship means it’s unlikely Red Bull will feel the need to institute team orders at his expense if he’s leading his team-mate…

“Great memories,” says Perez of last year’s race. “You know, that race very much makes me think of everyone who has been with me since day one, also my family, my kids, so it’s a very special race. You know, if there’s a race when I really want to do well, it’s definitely Mexico.

“The target is of course to win everywhere we go, but obviously Mexico will be the main one.”

Perez celebrated a home podium in last year's Mexican GP, but now has victory in his sights

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images