“Where are they? Am I just super early, or are they talking more than me?”
Sergio Pérez is sitting by himself on a white faux leather couch, waiting for Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso to finish their various interviews so they can begin a press conference reserved for the top three finishers in the Bahrain Grand Prix, the debut race of 2023. He catches up on videos of his kids sent from home, young voices cheering through his phone. Dad’s done good today.
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“Are you warming up the couch?” Verstappen, the race winner, has arrived.
“I’ve been here for like 10 minutes!” Pérez replies, then laughs. The teammates are in good spirits, having kicked off what looks like another dominant season for Red Bull.
After being asked about the team’s strong start, Pérez soon gets the question that has never been far from the surface in his three years alongside Verstappen: “But of course you are also a fighter and you want to win. Which area is it you still need to work on most to try and get closer to Max and beat him?”
Pérez comes back with optimism. “Finishing second is the maximum I could do today,” he says. “It’s a long season. I think I’m getting closer every single session.”
In a sport where your teammate tends to double as your chief rival, driving alongside Verstappen — who’s now gunning for his third straight championship — is no easy thing. Plenty of aspiring drivers have had their careers derailed by the challenge. But Pérez comes to the role with more than talent. He comes with experience.
His is a career of hard knocks. He gave up everything at a young age, leaving all he knew behind in Mexico. He fought his way to reach F1, only to see his dream with a top team end after a single year. He has had contracts terminated, gotten tangled in legal battles and lost a well-earned place on the grid. It all formed a mental fortitude that, even nearing the closing stages of his time in F1, has prepared him to play a role in which nobody has yet succeeded.
He is not going to give it anything less than 100%, and he won’t settle for second.
Mental edge borne out of sacrifice
“There were many points in that trip where I thought, ‘What the f— am I doing here?’”
At 14 years old, Sergio Pérez packed a bag, left his home in Guadalajara, Mexico, and took a one-way flight to Germany to chase his dream of becoming a Formula One driver.
Growing up, Pérez, known by his nickname “Checo,” saw most Mexican drivers racing in IndyCar. But after impressing through his go-karting career, he set his sights on F1, drawn by the series’ exotic nature. That meant moving to Europe. Although he had financial support from Escuderia Telmex, a racing scheme for Mexican drivers supported by telecom giant Carlos Slim, it was a difficult decision to make.
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“It was really big, to leave everything behind as a 14-year-old,” Pérez told The Athletic. “To go out and fight for your dreams, it was a massive thing. It was quite shocking at the time.”
His first taste of Europe had none of glamor we associate with F1. He lived above a restaurant owned by the manager of the team he raced for in Germany’s Formula BMW series, an entry-level single-seater series. The culture shock was huge. Homesickness was the biggest challenge, and he spent a lot of time alone. He didn’t speak any German and his English wasn’t great. Racing became “secondary,” he said. “It was mainly about surviving.”
After a tough two years, Pérez moved to England to race in British Formula 3 with a team that signed Pérez that made him feel at home. “They really treated me like their son,” he said. “It was a lot better then.”
Pérez’s performances put him on the path to graduate to GP2, the final stepping stone to F1. After two years there, he moved into the big leagues with Sauber, ending Mexico’s 30-year wait for an F1 driver. But the hardships that led him there were more than prelude.
“Those years gave me an edge,” he said. “I know that I’m mentally very strong. At the end of the day, it’s what you need to be in Formula 1.”
It’s a thesis based on a career’s worth of evidence.
A winding road to Red Bull
Pérez got his big break in his sophomore season in 2012, when three podium finishes for midfield team Sauber caught the eyes of F1’s top players. When Lewis Hamilton left McLaren for Mercedes, the British team tagged Pérez as his replacement.
His arrival coincided with the start of McLaren’s fall from being a front-running team. Pérez struggled to adjust. He couldn’t get the best out of the troublesome car, and filling Hamilton’s shoes was impossible. He went into a surprise slump, got dropped after a single year, and landed with Force India.
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Back in the midfield, Pérez rediscovered his form. He established himself as a midfield leader, more often than not being the driver who capitalized when the front-runners slipped up. The good vibes there ended when Force India entered administration (akin to bankruptcy) in the face of mounting debts. Pérez was among its creditors, owed money from the previous year. It was his decision to pull the trigger on legal action in a move to help save the team. “I ended up doing things that were much beyond a racing driver,” he said. “It wasn’t nice to end up in that position.”
The lifeboat didn’t have room for Pérez. The team was rescued by a consortium led by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, who wanted his son Lance in one seat and a statement signing — four-time champ Sebastian Vettel — in the other. At the end of 2020, the team (now branded Aston Martin) ended Pérez’s contract.
At that point in his 30s, Pérez made peace with the idea that his F1 career could be over. “I’d been in those midfield battles for so many years,” he said. “To me, what was most important was to get an opportunity where I could really be at my 100%, otherwise it was not really worth it to me.”
An uncertain future didn’t stop 2020 from being Pérez’s best F1 season to date, including a wild win in Bahrain that saw him go from last place at the start to first at the checkered flag. It was his first F1 win.
At the same time, Red Bull was agonizing over who to place alongside Verstappen for 2021. Alex Albon, his teammate, simply wasn’t operating on the same level. Albon had replaced Pierre Gasly, who managed only 12 races before he was swapped out mid-season. Gasly followed Daniel Ricciardo, who had come up with Red Bull but in 2018 left for Renault, in part because he thought the team prioritized Verstappen, its generational talent.
Red Bull had traditionally gone for young drivers from its junior team, Toro Rosso. Hiring a 30-year-old who had been all over the grid would be a huge break with tradition. But in December 2020, the team made the call to Pérez.
Christian Horner, Red Bull’s team principal, now admits it was perhaps “unfair” to have promoted Albon and Gasly so early in their F1 careers to such a high-profile seat. Pérez signaled a different tack.
“The key thing in the appointment of Checo was his experience,” Horner said.
Best supporting driver
The teammate dynamic in F1 is a tricky one. Although you need to work with your teammate to develop the car, work out the best setup and defeat the other nine teams in the constructors’ championship, he is also the first driver you want to beat, because he’s the only one working the same equipment. Typically, a driver can point to rivals having quicker cars to explain performance gaps. With teammates, there is no hiding.
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Doing that alongside Verstappen is extremely tough.
Red Bull put its faith in Verstappen from an early age. It made him F1’s youngest driver in 2015 and promoted him from Toro Rosso to its senior team just four races into his second year. Post-Ricciardo, the team tailored the car more and more to Verstappen’s driving style, favoring a ‘pointy’ front and an unstable backend that he could handle. It was one of the biggest difficulties for Gasly and Albon.
In his first season with Red Bull, Pérez scored a handful of podiums and a win in Baku, but struggled to tame a car made for Verstappen. He beat his teammate in qualifying just once all season and scored half as many points. A particularly low moment came at Spa, when he spun out in the rain behind the safety car, which keeps everyone moving slowly.
Pérez’s proved a vital member of the team at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, where he slowed Lewis Hamilton down to help Verstappen win the race, and the championship with it. And year two went better. He took a stunning pole in Saudi Arabia, and would have won the race without a badly timed safety car. His early-season form was such that Red Bull extended his contract, providing the stability he’d craved but rarely had.
“That really took the tension out,” said Pérez. “Formula 1 takes 100% out of you, so you need 100% energy to deliver on-track, off-track, to work with the engineers. It’s a very demanding sport.”
The new deal was signed before the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, where Pérez beat both Ferrari drivers and Verstappen to take his first win of the year. As he ascended the podium, he quipped to Horner: “I signed too early!”
But the Monaco win also sowed the seeds for tensions that sparked late in the season. Pérez had crashed during qualifying, causing a red flag that denied Verstappen a chance to improve his position. Five months later in Brazil, Verstappen, who had locked in the championship, was asked to let Pérez overtake to help him gain second place. Such positioning is common in F1; it’s the “team” element of racing. Verstappen refused.
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“I told you already last time, you guys don’t ask that again to me, OK?” he snapped on the radio. “Are we clear about that?” Pérez received an apology from his engineer, but simply replied: “It shows who he (Verstappen) really is.”
Talks followed. Red Bull insisted the air had been cleared. Both drivers said the discussions had been productive and relieved the tension. But it marked a crack in a relationship that had seemed harmonious.
The right man for the job
After the tension, Pérez’s took advantage of F1’s earliest finish since 2010 to go home to Mexico, spend as much time as he could with his family, and recharge for 2023.
He says he’s “never felt as prepared as this year” during his time with Red Bull. “I’m in a good place now,” he said. There’s a stability and understanding that only comes with time, for Pérez and his team.
“Checo, with that experience, he’s been through some of the hard knocks with his career,” said Horner. “What he’s brought to us is someone who is a very rounded guy. He’s a great team player.”
But that team player is also hungry for his own success. Pérez enjoyed his best season to date in F1 last year, taking third in the championship with two wins and nine further podiums. Given Red Bull’s emphatic start to the year, he may be the only driver with a real shot of beating Verstappen.
The motivation to win is what continues to fuel Pérez. At this point in his career and life, anything less simply would not cut it. “I have a great project, being with Red Bull,” he said. “That’s the reason I want to be here. I cannot be here if I didn’t have the car to fight for wins.”
Taking the fight to Verstappen is not a challenge for the faint-hearted. But this is the time Pérez feels at his best in F1. And importantly, after all the difficult years, all the sacrifices he made, he’s happy.
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“I’m really lucky in that regard,” he said. “It’s important to always make sure at the end of the day, whatever you’re doing in the world, you are very happy.”
Not that hoisting a trophy at the end of the year wouldn’t widen his smile.
(Top photo of Sergio Pérez and Max Verstappen: ANP via Getty Images)