Sergio Pérez

Sergio Pérez Mendoza (Spanish[ˈseɾxjo ˈpeɾes] ; born 26 January 1990) also known as "Checo" Pérez, is a Mexican racing driver, currently driving for Force India.
Pérez was a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy until 2012. He also took his first Formula One podium at the 2012 Malaysian Grand Prix with Sauber, a drive which won him plaudits and fuelled speculation of a move to Ferrari in the near future. However, Pérez later told reporters that he expected to stay with Sauber until at least the end of the 2012 season. Due to his young age and performance, he has been referred to as "The Mexican Wunderkind".
Pérez joined McLaren for the 2013 season however the car failed to deliver the team a single podium finish. Subsequently for the 2014 season, the team decided to replace Pérez with Danish driver Kevin Magnussen very late into the season almost leaving Pérez without a seat. In December 2013, it was announced that Force India had signed Pérez in a €15 million deal.

Born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Sergio Pérez is the youngest child of Antonio Pérez Garibay and Marilú Pérez (née Mendoza); he also has an older sister Paola and an older brother Antonio Pérez, who competes in the NASCAR Mexico Series, a stock car racing championship held in Mexico.

Both Pérez brothers are big football fans, stating that they thought about leaving car racing to play professionally. The Pérez brothers are friends of Mexican international Javier Hernández. In an interview in 2012 for the official Formula One website, Pérez revealed that if he had not been a driver would have liked to be a lawyer.

In November 2012, Pérez unveiled the Checo Pérez Foundation to support orphans and children with cancer; his sister Paola would also be involved with the project, as its President.

Karting

Pérez began his career at the age of 6 years in karting in 1996. In his first year of competition he achieved four victories in the junior category at the end of the year and claimed the runner-up spot in the category. In 1997, Pérez participated in the karting Youth Class, where he was the youngest driver in the category and earned a win, five podiums and finished fourth in the championship.

The following year, he returned to compete in the junior category, where he had eight wins; and at the end of the campaign, he became the youngest driver to become champion of the category. He also participated in several races in Shifter 125 cc, and competed in Master Kadets, where he finished on the podium.

In 1999, he raced in the 80 cc Shifter category, where he took three wins and finished third in the championship. Pérez also became the youngest driver to win a competition in the category, after obtaining special permission from the Federation to participate in the 80 cc Shifter.

In 2000, he raced in the Shifter 80 cc Championship, and also participated in three races in the Shifter 125 cc category which was part of the Telmex Challenge. However, Pérez was not satisfied with the results and the following season, was up for another championship, this time on the 125cc Shifter Regional, and once again was the youngest driver to compete in the category. With all these achievements, the Mexican driver caught the attention of scouts for Escuderia Telmex.

With six wins in 2002, Pérez finished as the national runner-up in the Shifter 125 cc category, and participated in the global race Shifter 80 cc, in Las Vegas, where qualified fifth and finished in 11th place.

In 2003, he was leading both championships in the 125 cc category, but withdrew from the last seven races, which proved to be a disappointment in his title aspirations. However, he finished in third place in Telmex Challenge, in addition to winning the Cup runner-up in Mexico. In the same year, he was also invited to attend the Easy Kart 125 Shootout, where he competed against drivers from around the world and managed to qualify in first place to eventually take the checkered flag, while he was the youngest in the category.

Skip Barber

Pérez competed in the United States-based Skip Barber National Championship in 2004. Driving for a team sponsored by Mexican telecommunications company Telmex, he finished eleventh in the championship.

Formula BMW

Pérez moved to Europe for 2005 to compete in the German Formula BMW ADAC series. Pérez was allowed to reside in a restaurant owned by his team manager for four months. He finished fourteenth in the championship, driving for Team Rosberg, and improved to sixth position the following year.

A1 Grand Prix

In the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix season, Pérez took part in a single round of the championship for A1 Team Mexico. He was the third-youngest driver to take part in the series.

Formula Three

Pérez switched to the British Formula 3 Championship for 2007. Pérez relocated his personal residence to Oxford. He competed in the National Class – for older chassis – with the T-Sport team, winning the championship by a comfortable margin. In the process, he won two-thirds of the races and a similar proportion of pole positions, and finished all but two races on the podium.

For 2008, he and T-Sport graduated to the premier International Class of the championship, where he was one of the few drivers to be equipped with a Mugen Honda engine. After leading the championship early in the season, he eventually finished fourth in the drivers' standings.

GP2 Series

Pérez drove for the Campos Grand Prix team in the 2008–09 GP2 Asia Series season, partnering Russian driver Vitaly Petrov. He was the first Mexican driver to compete at this level of motorsport since Giovanni Aloi took part in International Formula 3000 in 1990. He won his first GP2 Asia Series race at Sakhir, winning from lights-to-flag in the sprint race having started from pole position. He added a second win at Losail, during the sprint race of the night meeting in Qatar.

He moved to Arden International for the main 2009 GP2 Series season, driving alongside fellow Formula Three graduate Edoardo Mortara. Pérez finished twelfth in the standings, with a best result of second coming at Valencia. In the off-season, he contested two rounds of the 2009–10 GP2 Asia Series for Barwa Addax, ahead of a 2010 main series campaign with the team. He won five races, and finished second in the standings behind Pastor Maldonado.

Sauber (2011–2012)

2011 season

Pérez driving for Sauber at the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix.

On 4 October 2010, Sauber announced that Pérez would join the team in 2011, replacing Nick Heidfeld. Sauber subsequently announced a partnership with Pérez's sponsor Telmex. Pérez became the fifth Mexican to compete in Formula One, and the first since Héctor Rebaque competed between 1977 and 1981. Pérez also became a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy scheme in October 2010.

He passed the chequered flag in seventh place in his first race, the Australian Grand Prix, impressing observers by stopping to change tyres only once, becoming the only driver in the field to make fewer than two stops. However, both Sauber cars were subsequently disqualified for infringing technical regulations. Pérez failed to repeat the result in Malaysia where body parts flew off Sébastien Buemi's Toro Rosso car and into the electrical system of Pérez's Sauber, forcing his retirement. The Chinese Grand Prix saw him start in 12th position and he struggled during the race as well as making contact with several drivers en route to 17th. He followed that up with fourteenth in Turkey, before a ninth-place finish in Spain – ahead of team-mate Kamui Kobayashi in tenth – to take his first Formula One points.

During the third part of qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix, Pérez lost control of his car upon exiting the circuit's tunnel section, swung to the right and crashed into the barrier, before sliding across the chicane and hitting the TecPro barrier with a heavy side impact. Pérez was seen holding his hands around his head in an attempt to protect it just before the final impact. The session was suspended, and marshals and medical personnel extricated Pérez from his car. A Sauber team spokesman confirmed that Pérez was conscious and able to talk after the accident, and had been taken to the circuit's medical centre. He suffered a sprained thigh and concussion, and did not take part in the race the following day, on medical grounds. After taking part in the first practice session of the Canadian Grand Prix, Pérez did not feel well enough and decided not to take any further part, and was replaced by Pedro de la Rosa.

Pérez returned for the European Grand Prix and finished eleventh after attempting to run the race on a one-stop strategy. Pérez took a career best seventh at the British Grand Prix and eleventh in Germany. After a fifteenth place in Hungary, Pérez retired in Belgium with suspension failure. This was followed by a gearbox failure while running seventh in Italy, before he scored a point in Singapore after losing ninth place to Felipe Massa. In Japan he took eighth place, before a sixteenth-place finish in Korea, tenth in India, and an eleventh-place finish in Abu Dhabi. Pérez finished sixteenth in the Drivers' Championship with fourteen points.

On 28 July, it was announced that Pérez would remain with Sauber into the 2012 season, alongside team-mate Kobayashi. On 13 September, Pérez tested for Ferrari as part of the Ferrari Driver Academy in a Ferrari F60, Ferrari's car from the 2009 season. Pérez conducted the test with fellow academy member Jules Bianchi.

2012 season

Pérez chasing Alonso for the lead of the 2012 Malaysian Grand Prix, where he achieved his first podium in Formula One.

Pérez started the season with eighth place at the Australian Grand Prix, losing several places on the final lap due to excessively-worn tyres. In the second round at Malaysia, he went on to battle with Fernando Alonso for the win. In the dying laps of the race he was able to close the gap to 0.5 seconds, but was not able to make the pass as he went wide at turn 14 and fell back, finishing 2.2 seconds behind Alonso in second. Many observers praised the performance of Pérez during the race despite his late-race error, taking Sauber's best result as an independent team. In China, Pérez qualified a career-best eighth, but finished the race in eleventh place after problems with pit strategy and also his car's clutch.

He finished outside the points in the next three races – despite recording the fastest lap in Monaco – before Pérez achieved his second career podium at the Canadian Grand Prix, finishing the race in third place, having started fifteenth.

Pérez on his way to third place in the 2012 Canadian Grand Prix, his second podium finish.

In the European Grand Prix, Pérez qualified in fifteenth place, citing a handling imbalance and the car feeling "unpredictable" as reasons for the gap to Kobayashi in seventh. He improved to ninth place in the race, but raised poor qualifying form as an issue for the team. On lap 12 of the British Grand Prix, Pérez collided with Pastor Maldonado, forcing him to retire with broken suspension. He later criticised the Venezuelan, claiming "Everybody has concerns about him" before adding, "He is a driver who doesn't know that we are risking our lives and has no respect at all". Maldonado received a double penalty in the form of a reprimand and a €10,000 fine after the race. Pérez later added: "Just look at the last races. He ruined Hamilton's race (in Valencia), he ruined my race in Monaco by doing stupid things. I don't understand why the stewards don't take a serious decision with him. With Pastor they're not doing anything that will teach him a lesson."

Pérez at the 2012 United States Grand Prix

For the German Grand Prix, Pérez started in 17th position but was able to make his way through the field, and ultimately finished the race in 6th place. At the Belgian Grand Prix, Pérez made it into Q3 and qualified fifth fastest. A penalty for Maldonado subsequently promoted Pérez to a career-best fourth on the grid. In the race, Pérez was forced to retire in the first turn of the first lap after Romain Grosjean caused a spectacular accident. Grosjean crashed his car into Lewis Hamilton creating a domino effect which involved five cars. Also involved in the accident were, the championship leader Fernando Alonso and Pérez's team-mate Kamui Kobayashi.

Pérez took his third podium at the Italian Grand Prix. On Saturday, he failed to qualify for Q3, and was twelfth on the grid. On Sunday, he put in a storming drive to climb through the field to second place, passing on track, among others, Kimi Räikkönen, Nico Rosberg, Felipe Massa and Alonso. Unlike most of the drivers in the field, Pérez started the race on hard tyres and changed to the medium tyres on lap 29, allowing him to lead the Grand Prix for five laps. As a result, Pérez and his car's outstanding tyre management got him well into the points, and ultimately, to a podium finish. Ultimately, Pérez finished the season in tenth place in the Drivers' Championship with 66 points, 6 more than team-mate Kobayashi.

McLaren (2013)

2013 season

Pérez in the MP4-28 during winter tests at Jerez, in 2013

On 28 September 2012, Lewis Hamilton's decision to leave McLaren for Mercedes in 2013 was announced, and Pérez was subsequently confirmed as Hamilton's replacement. He also replaced Hamilton in McLaren's cartoon Tooned. This also ended Pérez' association with Ferrari, being released from its driver academy.

In the season-opening race in Australia, Pérez qualified 15th and finished in 11th position, later describing the weekend as "difficult" for himself and the team as a whole. Pérez started the Malaysian Grand Prix from ninth on the grid, and finished the race in the same position, scoring his first points for McLaren. Pérez also achieved the fastest lap of the race, having pitted for fresh tyres.

In the Bahrain GP, he started 12th on the grid and finishing 6th ahead of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso (8th) and his teammate Jenson Button (10th), with whom he had a fierce duel in which they touched on a couple of occasions, increasing the competition between drivers in McLaren on the following races.

After the Bahrain Grand Prix, Jenson Button was quoted with the following on Pérez's driving style:

I've raced with many team-mates over the years and with quite an aggressive team-mate in Lewis, but I'm not used to driving down the straight and then my team-mate coming along and wiggling his wheels at me and banging wheels with me at 300km/h. I've had some tough fights in F1 but not quite as dirty as that. That's something you do in karting and normally you grow out of it but that's obviously not the case with Checo [Pérez]. Soon something serious will happen so he has to calm down. He's extremely quick and he did a great job today but some of it is unnecessary and an issue when you are doing those speeds.

— Jenson Button speaking to ESPN about Perez after the 2013 Bahrain Grand Prix

Pérez at the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix.

At the 2013 Monaco Grand Prix Pérez performed several aggressive overtaking moves, before retiring after colliding with Kimi Räikkönen. Following the incident Räikkönen said that Pérez should be "punched in the face". Pérez recorded a season-best fifth-place finish in India, finishing four seconds shy of the podium, a result that left him "extremely satisfied".

Pérez confirmed on 13 November 2013 that he would be leaving McLaren at the end of the season to be replaced by Kevin Magnussen. On 12 December 2013 (exactly a month after it was announced he would leave McLaren), Force India confirmed Pérez would join Nico Hülkenberg in their driver line-up for 2014 in a 15 million Euro deal.

Force India (2014–present)

Pérez at the 2014 Bahrain Grand Prix where he achieved his first podium finish since the 2012 season, with third place in the race.

On 12 December 2013, Pérez had his drive for Force India in 2014 confirmed.

2014

In the Australian Grand Prix, he finished 11th but was moved up to 10th to get his first point for Force India due to Daniel Ricciardo being disqualified for breaching fuel limits. He failed to start the Malaysian Grand Prix, after his car encountered gearbox issues prior to the start of the race. Nevertheless, a week later in the Bahrain Grand Prix, he was able to score Force India's first podium since 2009, holding off Ricciardo's Red Bull for a third-place finish. At the Chinese Grand Prix, Pérez started 16th and after gaining four places at the start, was able to overtake both McLarens and Daniil Kvyat's Toro Rosso to finish 9th. Outqualifying his teammate for a second time, Pérez started in tenth position for the Monaco Grand Prix however a first lap collision with Jenson Button meant an early retirement for the first time in the season. At the Canadian Grand Prix, Pérez was again fighting for another podium finish until the car suffered braking issues, later resulting in losing the third-place position to both Red Bulls. On the last lap he was involved in a collision with Felipe Massa, who crashed into the back of his Force India sending both cars heavily into the barriers. Pérez was subsequently given a five-place grid penalty for the next race, as the stewards decided he changed his racing line, causing Massa to crash into him. At the Austrian Grand Prix, Pérez set his third fastest lap of his career whilst also giving Force India their third fastest lap in their history.

On 7 November 2014, before the Brazilian Grand Prix, Force India announced that Pérez would remain with the team for the 2015 season. Pérez stated that contract negotiations were "ongoing", in regards to a further contract extension. The deal was officially confirmed at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with Pérez signing a new two-year contract, until the end of the 2016 season.

2015

Pérez at the 2015 Canadian Grand Prix

Pérez during the 2015 Mexican Grand Prix

The 2015 season started with a 10th place for Pérez in Australia, followed by a 13th in Malaysia, an 11th in China and an eighth in Bahrain. He came fifth in Belgium and sixth in Italy. His best race of the season was in Russia, where he scored his first podium of 2015 and Force India's third ever. Pérez finished the 2015 championship in ninth, his highest championship position to date, with 78 points. He outscored teammate Hülkenberg by 20 points. Besides the podium finish in Russia, Pérez managed three further top five finishes in Belgium, USA and Abu Dhabi; he scored 63 of his 78 points in the final nine rounds. In the second half of the season he out qualified his teammate in six of the last nine races, and eight times throughout the season.

2016

Pérez experienced a difficult start to the season for the first four races due to an uncompetitive VJM09 - even though he broke into the points with a ninth place in Russia.

Upgrades were introduced in Barcelona with a seventh place finish confirming the team's change in form.

A stellar drive in Monaco in wet and changing conditions saw him score his sixth (and Force India's fourth) podium finish and he moved to ninth in the Drivers' Championship standings. As usual with his podiums, tyre management played a big role but in contrast to previous occasions he pitted as many times as Ferrari and Red Bull, at times catching up with the front runners and managing to hold Sebastian Vettel in fourth at a comfortable distance.

Pérez finished third in the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix.

In the European Grand Prix in Baku Pérez once again finished third, recovering from a gearbox change penalty as a result of a crash during free practice, having been fast enough to qualify on the front row. Despite having to start from seventh on the grid he made his way up to fourth before passing Kimi Räikkönen on the last lap of the race for third, making it his second podium in three races.

2017

After the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix, Pérez confirmed he has committed to Force India for the 2017 Formula One season. Pérez will remain with the Indian team for a fourth consecutive season alongside new teammate Esteban Ocon, ending speculation of a possible move to Williams, Renault or Haas.

Career summary

† Includes points scored by other drivers.

Complete A1 Grand Prix results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete GP2 Series results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete GP2 Asia Series results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete Formula One results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

† Driver failed to finish the race, but was classified as they had completed >90% of the race distance.