Sergio
Pérez

Sergio Pérez was born in Guadalajara on 26 January 1990 and started karting at the age of six. His older brother Antonio also raced, in the Mexican NASCAR series. Sergio moved to Europe in 2005 to contest the German ADAC Formula BMW series. In 2007 he won the National Class of the British Formula 3 Championship with T-Sport, and in 2008 he finished fourth in the higher International Class. He raced in GP2 for Arden in 2009 and was runner-up to Pastor Maldonado in 2010 with Addax, winning five races. From 2010 to 2012 he was a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy.

He made his Formula One debut with Sauber in 2011. In the opening race in Australia he crossed the line seventh, but he and his team-mate were disqualified for a technical infringement. In 2012 he took podiums for Sauber in Malaysia, Canada and Italy and finished tenth in the championship. For 2013 he joined McLaren as the replacement for Lewis Hamilton, who had left for Mercedes. There was no podium, and his best race result was fifth in India.

From 2014 to 2018 he drove for Force India, a team that was rebranded part-way through 2018 and ran as Racing Point in 2019 and 2020. His podiums there included Bahrain in 2014, Monaco and Baku in 2016, and Baku again in 2018. In 2020 he finished fourth in the championship and won the Sakhir Grand Prix after dropping to last place following a first-lap collision. He was the first Mexican winner since Pedro Rodríguez in 1970.

He joined Red Bull in 2021 as team-mate to Max Verstappen. He took his first win for the team in Baku, and in Abu Dhabi his defence against Hamilton helped Verstappen in the title fight. In 2022 he claimed the first pole position by a Mexican driver in Saudi Arabia, won in Monaco and Singapore, and finished third in the standings. In 2023 he won in Saudi Arabia and Baku, took pole position in Miami and finished runner-up to Verstappen. He was winless in 2024, finished eighth in the championship and left Red Bull at the end of the season. After a year away, he returned in 2026 with the new Cadillac team alongside Valtteri Bottas.

Source: Wikipedia, “Sergio Pérez”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.