Sergio Pérez is gearing up to make his F1 return as part of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, following a year away from the grid after being dropped by Red Bull Racing at the end of the 2024 season.
Debuting with the team in 2021, he helped Max Verstappen secure his first Driver's World Championship and finished fourth overall. He secured third and second place in the 2022 and 2023 seasons, but struggled in a winless 2024 season that saw him end his time with Red Bull eighth in the standings.
The Mexican driver's drop in form led to him being replaced by Liam Lawson, who was demoted to the Racing Bulls sister team after only two races. Yuki Tsunoda then took over, only to finish a disastrous seventeenth in the Championship (he'll be Red Bull's Reserve Driver this year).
In a new interview with Oso Trava, Checco opened up on the biggest challenges he faced while racing for Red Bull. "The team complained about everything," he said. "At Red Bull, everything was a problem. If I was faster, it was a problem and it created a very tense environment. If I was slower than Max, that was also a problem."
"I understood that these were the circumstances I was working in and, instead of complaining, I tried to make the best of it. I knew what I was getting into at Red Bull."
"During my first discussion with Christian [Horner], he told me: 'We're going to race with two cars because we have to have two cars, but this project was created for Max, he's our talent,'" Pérez revealed. "I was in the best team, a very complicated team. Being Max's teammate is already very difficult, but being Max's teammate at Red Bull is the worst job in Formula 1."
There are no hard feelings between Pérez and Verstappen, as the two recently exchanged helmets. On his, Max wrote, "Thanks for being the best teammate and friend."
The Cadillac Formula 1 Team later reflected on a conversation with former Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner, in which he confronted his boss about dropping him in favour of Lawson.
"At that moment, I said to him, 'Christian, what are you going to do when it doesn't work out with Liam?' He replied that there was Yuki. 'And what are you going to do when it doesn't work out with Yuki?'" Checco recalled. "He replied, 'We have a lot of drivers.' I told him he was going to use them all and he said, 'Yes, I know.'"
Elsewhere in the interview, Pérez also claimed that he was faster than his teammate in the Sim at the start of the 2022 season and fighting for the Championship until Horner and Red Bull introduced upgrades that were better suited to Max's driving style.
Things have changed greatly at Red Bull since Pérez's departure, with Horner and Helmut Marko both ousted from the Milton Keynes-based team. Laurent Mekies is now Team Principal, with Isack Hajjar set to team with Verstappen for the 2026 season.