Perez: “My hardest year in F1 wasn’t at Red Bull, but at McLaren”
The 2026 Formula 1 season will see the debut of a new team, Cadillac, becoming the eleventh team on the grid with a lineup featuring drivers returning to F1. Sharing the garage for the American squad will be Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez, both of whom did not participate in the previous championship. At the end of 2024, the Mexican driver was not retained by Red Bull due to unsatisfactory results, with Milton Keynes promoting Liam Lawson in his place, who himself was replaced after just two races by Yuki Tsunoda.
This made 2024 one of the most challenging years of Sergio Perez’s career from 2011 to 2024, yet the 35-year-old has clarified that it wasn’t the toughest period overall. Speaking at EXMA CDMX 2025, Sergio Perez did not point to his Red Bull years as the hardest in F1: “No, I think of McLaren,” he recalled. “It was very tough because my career was just starting there. It was my second year, 2013, and I had the chance to sign with three different teams, three big teams. So, in your second year, you think you’re going to conquer Formula 1. That Formula 1 was too small, every team wants you, so you make a decision, but when you realize you’ve made the wrong decision, you go from being the driver of the moment in F1 to having no seat for the next year. I had only been in F1 for three years, and in my fourth season, there was no place for me. Fortunately, thanks to God, a great opportunity opened up at Force India, and I was able to have a very beautiful story.”
Reflections on Red Bull
Regarding his time at Red Bull, Sergio Perez acknowledged the challenges he faced with the Anglo-Austrian team: “What happened with Red Bull, in the end, I knew it was the best thing that could have happened to me,” he continued, “because being at Red Bull, under the conditions I was in, was very demanding. All the drivers who came before and those who will come after will face the same problems because it’s a very complex car to drive, and you’re constantly adapting. So being both an athlete and a driver is a mentally demanding challenge, and often you have the entire team against you, criticizing you in the media, because there’s a lot happening behind the scenes, including political issues that aren’t visible. Everyone recognizes the excellent work I did all those years, and it’s even more impressive, but the toughest blow was at McLaren.”
Sergio Perez’s retrospective on his F1 career places his 2013 McLaren stint as his most devastating professional low, largely due to the sudden shift from being the sport’s rising star to facing an exit from the grid. While acknowledging the extreme mental toll and “hidden politics” of his recent years at Red Bull, Sergio Perez views his survival of those challenges as a testament to his capabilities. As he prepares to lead Cadillac in 2026, these experiences form the backbone of a driver who has navigated both the highest peaks and the most complex political landscapes in Formula 1.
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