Sergio Perez has been a teammate of Max Verstappen for two years. However, he could have come out for Red Bull much earlier…
Sergio Perez was close to exiting Formula 1 in 2020 when Red Bull knocked on the door. It was a weird situation. In his tenth season, Perez had finally won his first race. Thanks to Corona, there was an extra race on a crazy layout of the circuit in Bahrain. The ‘pink Mercedes’ that Racing Point used that year turned out to be ideal for this ‘oval’. Despite an incident at the start of the race, Perez gobbled up the field. When Russell, who came on for Hamilton, fell back with bad luck in the final phase, the victory was for Checo.
For 2021, however, Racing Point, which would continue as Aston Martin, turned out to have set its sights on Vettel, who had fallen out of favor at Ferrari. And since the other driver in the team is the owner’s son, there was suddenly no room for the brand new GP winner. For example, an F1 career that started promisingly, but always just missed that big breakthrough, seemed to end on a high unintentionally.
Because already in his first years in the sport at Sauber, Perez made an impression. In the end, he was just a little better than the equally well-regarded Kamui Kobayashi. Sergio regularly managed to steal podiums with cars that actually had no claim to it, such as the Saubers, but later also various Force Indias. He even almost won the Malaysian Grand Prix with the Sauber in 2012.
Perez was leading in the rain, until the team told him that a second place would also be very nice. Perhaps somewhat taken out of his concentration, he made a mistake that gave Alonso the chance to take the victory. Evil tongues claim that the long-standing link between Sauber and Ferrari may have played a role. But oh well, those are those folklore things that we will never really know about.
After his period at Sauber, Sergio rightly claimed the transition to a top team based on his performance. He was linked to the Ferrari Driver Academy at the time. However, he broke those ties when he got a chance at McLaren. It turned out to be an unfortunate choice.
The team from Woking had just lost factory support from Mercedes for a few years, which had started its own team. That initially went reasonably well, but eventually a number of major sponsors also left and the team fell into decline. Precisely in Perez’s debut season at McLaren, there was a real dip in performance for the first time.
The Mexican defended himself quite orderly against Jenson Button, who was secretly better than most estimate, especially in his later years. Magnussen did objectively less well a year later compared to Button. Nevertheless, after a year of ‘top team’, Perez was the child of the bill.
Fortunately for the Mexican, loyal sponsor Carlos Slim footed the bill for him to continue his career with Force India. Although there were rumors every year that Perez would get another chance with one or the other top team, that chance never came. Perez signed every year for a year, to keep the door open for better opportunities. Ironically, he seemed to have just given up on that and signed a three-year deal when his contract was torn up. And that seemed to be the end. Until Red Bull knocked on the door at the end of 2020.
That this happened was actually a break with tradition for Red Bull. In principle, Helmut Marko only wanted to lift drivers from his own talent pool into F1. However, at that point, that talent pool was pretty dried up and burned out. Albon and Gasly were crushed by Verstappen and a top talent did not immediately present itself in the entry-level classes. Thus, Perez became the first driver since Mark Webber to join the team from outside his own clique.
However, it had once been close or Perez had been part of the training program. Perez recalls GP Racing Magazine the time he tried to get Red Bull’s backing. He doesn’t remember whether it was 2006 or 2007. But at least there was a test at Jerez:
It didn’t go great. I had a problem with my riding position, my knees were touching the handlebars, so I didn’t really set good times. I came in thinking that I could solve all those things for a while and then do better. But that didn’t happen. I drove into the pit and that was that. I was sort of thrown out of the car and it was done. That was just typical Helmut Marko. If you weren’t fast enough, the reason didn’t really matter and it was just over.
Sergio Perez, Helmut Marko thinks is now quite okay
For some drivers it was over there. However, Sergio was able to continue with the support of his other wealthy sponsors. One of his former team bosses claims that this certainty made the Mexican lazy. However, Perez remembers that a year later he could get sweet revenge on Marko in Formula 3:
I ran into Helmut a year later at Silverstone. I beat the Red Bull juniors and spoke to Helmut. He told me ‘we will beat you’. So I told him ‘ok Helmut’…
Sergio Perez, got sweet revenge
In 2009, Perez and the Red Bull stronghold met again on the path of life. Perez did his first season in GP2 that year. He played for the team of Arden, the team of Adrian Horner and his father. Perez didn’t have a great season but narrowly beat his teammate Edoardo Mortara in terms of points. The latter was also no cake baker, because he won the F3 championship and the F3 Grand Prix of Macao that year. After eventful years in the DTM, Mortara will enter Formula E next year.
Perez claims that after a good race at Silverstone, Horner approached him and asked if he was interested in a role within the Red Bull team. However, this never really got serious. A year later, the Mexican became part of the Ferrari Driver Academy and crushed our hero Giedo van der Garde with the GP2 team of Barwa Addax.
Perez finished second in the championship in his second GP2 year, behind Pastor Maldonado and ahead of the late Jules Bianchi. GiGa was seventh ahead of fellow interviewer Davide Valsecchi. It would then take a good ten years before Perez ended up at Red Bull. Whether things would have gone even better if it had happened sooner, Perez says the following:
Who knows what would have happened and what opportunities I would have been given. It helps to be a part of that program anyway. But I’m thankful for the opportunity I have now.
Sergio Perez, mainly looks ahead
Whose deed.
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