Sergio Perez reflects on his F1 journey as he prepares for 300th Grand Prix start at home in Mexico City

By Vancouver Television Sports Desk

Sergio Perez is set to mark a defining career milestone on home soil this weekend at the Mexico City Grand Prix, when he lines up for his 300th Formula 1 Grand Prix start. The number places him seventh on the sport’s all-time entry list, moving past Sebastian Vettel, and adds to the significance of the event because it is another opportunity to perform in front of the Mexico crowd.

Ahead of the race, Perez spoke to F1.com through a photo-led look back at his journey, covering the highs and lows of his time across multiple teams. He first entered F1’s top tier after being promoted with Sauber for the 2011 season, following success in junior single-seater categories, including wins in British F3 and GP2. In GP2’s 2010 season, he finished runner-up, behind only Pastor Maldonado, with Jules Bianchi also involved in the points fight.

Perez’s early arrival in F1 came with an immediate statement. At the Australian Grand Prix on debut, the then 21-year-old finished seventh using an alternate one-stop strategy. However, that result was later lost when both Sauber cars were disqualified for rear wing breaches. Despite that setback, Perez carried momentum through his rookie points finishes and faced another early challenge during his sixth Grand Prix weekend in Monaco, after a heavy crash.

In 2012, Perez and Sauber moved further into the kind of midfield competitiveness that could occasionally reach the front of the field. A standout moment arrived at the second round in Malaysia, where Perez took advantage of changeable wet/dry conditions to win, including wheel-to-wheel racing with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. Reflecting on that period, Perez described the sheer volume of memories connected to the milestone, saying that in his “best dreams” he could not have imagined such a successful career and emphasizing how his path had taken him from arriving in F1 with “nothing” to now being “a dad of four kids.”

The Malaysian victory was part of a season in which Perez also produced strong results, including a P3 finish in Canada and another P2 in Italy. Those performances were linked, in the retelling, to his ability to manage tyre life and make multiple strategies work. The same run of promise also brought speculation ahead of the next phase of his career, including talk that he could have moved to Ferrari after joining the Ferrari Driver Academy.

That speculation changed after Lewis Hamilton’s unexpected switch from McLaren to Mercedes, which opened a different route in the driver market. Perez said that while Ferrari would have seemed an “obvious choice” given his background, “McLaren came” and he described joining the team as a “massive opportunity.” He moved alongside Jenson Button and believed the chances for race wins and world titles were real. Instead, his time in McLaren proved difficult: he had no pole positions, victories, or podiums, and his best finish in a Grand Prix was fifth.

Perez said that when he arrived at McLaren it “wasn’t a good year,” and that the season became “hectic” and “tough,” culminating in a best result of fifth and a failure to reach the podium. He added that the situation put his career at risk when McLaren did not renew his contract and, with it being only his third year in F1, he felt he had “no options” elsewhere.

A lifeline came from Force India ahead of the 2014 season, when turbo-hybrid power units were introduced. Perez characterized the shift as an improvement for a smaller team aided by Mercedes’ engine performance, and he pointed to an early highlight: in his third race with Force India, he was on the podium at Bahrain, battling Mercedes drivers Hamilton and Nico Rosberg while fending off Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull.

Perez described his Force India stretch as one where he developed into a regular points scorer and continued to collect podiums, including Russia in 2015, Monaco and Azerbaijan in 2016, and Azerbaijan again in 2018. The same period also included a personal career landmark: his home Grand Prix return in Mexico, after becoming only the fifth Mexican driver to compete in F1 and the first since Héctor Rebaque in 1981. For Perez, the 2015 inclusion of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, ending a 23-year absence from the calendar, made his first home race “a dream come true,” and he said he realized how much it meant to his country when he arrived in Mexico.

The later years of his Force India spell, though, were marked by instability. As 2018 progressed, the team faced major financial troubles and Perez took legal action intended to help protect around 400 jobs. A consortium led by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll then bought the team, which was rebranded from Force India to Racing Point Force India, then Racing Point outright, and later transitioned into the revived Aston Martin works team at the start of the 2021 season. Perez called the period “very tough,” describing meetings with engineers and lawyers even before qualifying and race weekends, and framing it as a set of difficult decisions tied to protecting colleagues he had worked with for years.

From that difficult phase, the milestone journey also threads into Perez’s maiden Grand Prix victory in 2020, arriving in a delayed and revised season shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic. After missing two races earlier in the campaign, he followed with a sequence of mid-season points finishes and had recently taken second place at a rain-affected Turkish Grand Prix before reaching Bahrain for a double-header. The first Bahrain race brought retirement due to an engine-related issue, while the second race featured a dramatic start, including a three-car collision on the opening lap involving Perez. Perez described the order of events in the photo display—saying he would “change the slot”—and recounted the decisive turnaround: “Charles [Leclerc] crashed into me, then Max [Verstappen] tried to avoid us and went into the wall, but it worked out perfectly.”

Even after dropping to the back of the field, Perez recovered into the points-paying positions by Lap 20, using overtakes before his and Racing Point’s strategy came through around Virtual Safety Car and Safety Car periods. He later benefited from pit stop and puncture dramas that affected front-running Mercedes drivers, with George Russell taking over for an unwell Hamilton for his Mercedes debut. Perez then took the chequered flag, becoming the first Mexican driver to win an F1 race since Pedro Rodríguez at the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix, ahead of Renault’s Esteban Ocon and Perez’s teammate Lance Stroll.

The win also fed directly into his next opportunity. Perez said at the time he did not have a seat for the following year and that, with limited options, it effectively meant “Red Bull or nothing.” Once that chance arrived, he framed the move as a rare second opportunity to show what he could do in a top-level team, while Red Bull’s decision also represented a departure from its junior talent pipeline after struggles for Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon alongside Max Verstappen.

Perez’s Red Bull years are presented as both a personal and team-centered chapter. He took a second career victory on the streets of Azerbaijan and added further podiums in 2021, then, in the final race in Abu Dhabi, Perez’s strategy and tyre control helped support Verstappen in the title finish. Perez credited his role in the team’s approach and said that, with Verstappen winning the championship, it mattered “more importantly” that Red Bull could back its team as a whole. He also pointed to another home highlight, taking a Mexico City rostrum in 2022 with his son at an age he called special for the moment.

After winning further in the period through 2022 and 2023 and contributing to successive Teams’ Championship titles, Perez described a downturn from the Monaco Grand Prix weekend in 2024. He explained that following a contract extension, Monaco marked the start of what he called “a very difficult period,” connected to struggles with the car, including “corner entry instability,” and later pressure and negativity. He said that despite having a contract, it was decided at the end of the year to split, leading him to take a year out.

That break then led to his return with 2026 newcomers Cadillac. Perez said he was approached by “a few teams” after leaving Red Bull and that there were “interesting projects” to consider. By summer, he had secured his return with Cadillac, backed by General Motors, describing the central goal as finding the right project that motivated him to give everything in F1. He added that once he learned who was behind the effort, he knew Cadillac was the place where he wanted to finish his career and help bring the team “to the top.”

As the celebration of 300 starts approaches at the Mexico City Grand Prix—delayed in his case by calendar changes that had the Bahrain event slot in and affected the timing of the milestone—Perez said simply, “Crazy!” and reflected on how his career’s path has turned a childhood dream into a long, home-coming moment.