Lando Norris is now a Formula 1 race winner, but he is not the only driver who had to wait a long time for their first big hit. F1 history is filled with stories of drivers who had to work really hard for their long awaited first victory. In this episode: the Mexican Minister of Defense, Sergio “Checo” Perez.
Success in Formula 1 is really a combination of talent, luck, and getting to the right team at the right time. It is that last factor where it went wrong for Perez. Fans who only remember his 2023 season might not realize this, but for the longest time Perez was regarded as one of the best drivers in F1’s midfield. He was just very unfortunate with his timing in the sport.
Checo got into F1 in 2011 but would have to wait a staggering ten seasons before getting his first win. That’s because during most of that time, all the victories were claimed by either Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes. If you weren’t in one of those teams, you had almost no chance of winning a race.
| Sergio Perez | |
|---|---|
| Year of first win | 2020 |
| Races before first win | 190 |
| Podiums before first win | 9 |
And that was exactly the situation Checo was in when he joined Sauber in 2011. The team was at best a midfield team and more often than not had to hope for an accident up front to score any points. Checo would immediately show some of the skills that would later become his hallmarks: incredible defensive driving and great control over the lifespan of his tyres. While most drivers would have to make two or three pitstops, Checo would manage with just one and finish in the points because of that. His first podium would follow a year later, still with Sauber, finishing only 2 seconds behind the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso in Malaysia. He’d score two more podiums that year - again, in a Sauber! - with the last one being particularly remarkable. Despite not getting out of Q2 in qualifying, he once again showed expert tyre management during the race and overtook drivers such as Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso to finish the race in third. By now he had sufficiently proven his worth to the top teams.
Force India
For 2013, Checo would move to McLaren as the replacement of Lewis Hamilton. This seemed promising considering McLaren had won seven races the previous season. But sadly for Checo, this was right around the time when the McLaren downfall began. He and teammate Jenson Button failed to score any podiums that year. The next year he’d move to Force India, where he would stay for six seasons.
Checo and Force India were an excellent match. He helped the team grow into a solid midfield team and he would score every single one of the team’s podiums during his time there. It really was very clear how comfortable Checo was within the team, and how happy the team was with him. He brought in much needed funds but also helped develop the team. The result of that: four more podiums for Checo and the team ending the season in fourth place twice in a row.
Previous team owner Vijay Mallya (L) and new team owner Lawrence Stroll (R).
The Stroll Saga
But behind the scenes things were about to come crashing down. Turns out that team owner Vijay Mallya was doing some things that were considered “less than legal”. Every court and law enforcement agency in India had their sights aimed at him and obviously this had its effects on the team. In an effort to save Force India, Perez actually led a group of creditors in putting the team into administration, which was done as an attempt to save the team from going under completely. Perez himself went around trying to find a new owner for the team and ultimately managed to strike a deal with Lawrence Stroll, Canadian billionaire and father of F1 driver Lance Stroll.
Stroll would take over the team, rename it to Racing Point, put his son in the second seat and keep the team alive for a few more years. But he had bigger ambitions with the team and halfway through 2020 it was announced that Sebastian Vettel would join the team for the next year. Even though they didn’t say which driver would leave the team, it was pretty obvious that it wouldn’t be the one related to the owner by blood.
It was a gut punch for Checo. Not only had he done amazing things to help this team grow and stay alive, but he had also massively outperformed Lance Stroll over the course of the season. Stroll was a distant eleventh, while Perez was ahead of the Ferrari’s and the second Red Bull in the championship. And because it was so late in the season, it seemed impossible that he’d get another seat. Sergio Perez, at the time one of the most beloved and underrated drivers in the paddock, looked set for an unceremonious exit from Formula 1.
The Sakhir Grand Prix
It was against this backdrop that Perez and the other drivers lined up for the Sakhir Grand Prix, the second-to-last race of the season. Due to the 2020 season taking place in the middle of the pandemic, there were some unusual circumstances. It was the second race in just as many weeks that was held at the Bahrain International Circuit, albeit with a different layout. The previous race hadn’t been a great affair for Checo: his engine caught fire in the final laps of the race while he was running in third. It was a chance for him at a revanche at the track, though it didn’t look very promising for him.
Perez's car at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Though there was one thing to make it a little more interesting: Lewis Hamilton, who had won almost all races all year and was already crowned the champion, wouldn’t participate this time because he tested positive for COVID. That meant there was a bit more of a fight for the podium. He would be replaced by Williams driver George Russell. However, qualifying gave an ominous prospect: Russell and his teammate Valtteri Bottas lined up 1 and 2. Different driver, same old dominant car.
The two Mercedes drivers stormed off at the start, leaving Perez to fight for third with Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen. The fight got a little bit too intense though: Leclerc tried to brake late but missed his mark, crashing into Perez and breaking his own suspension. Verstappen tried to avoid the collision but in doing so ran off the track and hit the barrier. Leclerc out, Verstappen out, Checo down in last after having to make a pitstop to fix his punctured tyre.
But crucially: he was still in the race. His early pitstop allowed him to show some of his expert tyre management, and over the next 50 laps he would slowly claw his way back into a points scoring position. That was already good enough, but there were still 40 laps to go. A very brief Virtual Safety Car caught some of the drivers off guard, allowing Perez to climb up to third behind the two Mercedes drivers.
The Mercedes team meanwhile had decided to make Russell’s first race for them absolute hell. The young Briton had driven an incredible race and looked almost guaranteed for the win, but that was all about to change. The team called him in for a pitstop but accidentally gave him the tyres meant for Bottas. This is actually illegal, so Russell had to come in for another pitstop almost immediately. Bottas meanwhile wasn’t having a great time with this either, and by the end of this mess they came back out in fourth and fifth. Checo was leading the race.
Within four laps, Russell had caught up to Checo and a mighty scrap for the win began. Russell in the absolute rocketship that was the W11, Perez in a car that was so similar to last year’s winning Merc that it was often called “The Pink Mercedes”. They fought tooth and nail for five laps, but then Russell’s day went from bad to horrible. He suffered a puncture and had to come into the pits again, this time dropping him down to 14th. With the much slower Renault of Ocon now behind him, Checo finished the race without ever coming under threat again to drive home and win his first race in 190 starts. With this victory, he was now fourth in the standings, only behind Verstappen, Bottas and Hamilton. Tears were streaming down his face as he stood on the podium, listening to his national anthem playing for him specifically.
And yet he was still out of a seat for next year. A fact that was incomprehensible to… well, to everyone. He had just won the Sakhir Grand Prix, he had shown incredible consistency all year with not a single crash all season, and he was now ahead of most of the field in the standings. Red Bull driver Alexander Albon meanwhile had been underperforming for the entire season. Even though all the frontrunners were knocked out of this race, he still couldn’t manage higher than sixth place. The calls from fans and pundits were clear: put Checo in that Red Bull, because it is simply impossible that a driver of this caliber is kicked out of the sport just because he isn’t the son of the team’s owner. A week after the season finale, they would get their wish: Perez was announced as the new teammate for Verstappen, and he would play a crucial role in the title deciding battle at Abu Dhabi in 2021.