Sergio Perez's return to Formula 1 with Cadillac has come with an unusually frank running commentary — on the reset he's chasing, and on the Red Bull environment he says quietly eroded his belief.
On the High Performance podcast, the Mexican cast the move to the grid's newest outfit as something personal. "This is a massive project; this is a massive brand," he said. "It can be my project as well. I can be part of it and I can show myself that I'm one of the best and I want to do that because I always believe that I'm one of the best on the grid."
That conviction, he admits, was worn down over his final years next to Max Verstappen. "The period at Red Bull takes that confidence from you when you are not delivering and your team-mate is winning and so on," Perez said. "And I always knew what the issues were, but it takes confidence away from you. That's why I wanted to come back."
He was candid about the hierarchy he'd signed into, going back to his first conversation with Christian Horner. "The first time I met Christian, he told me, 'We go racing with two cars because we have to, otherwise we would be super happy just to race with one car,'" Perez recalled, saying the priority was spelled out plainly: "Everything is for Max, around Max. We want to win the championship."
His value, he argues, was only recognised in the rear-view mirror. "I overdelivered in all areas over there," Perez said, noting that "only once I left and they brought in all the other drivers did they realise the job that I have done for them over four years" — a nod to Red Bull's revolving second seat since his exit.
There was warmth from one Red Bull quarter, at least. Chief engineer Paul Monaghan tipped the veteran to bounce back once refreshed. "Perhaps a year off, a bit of sunshine, reset the brain, and he'll come back — and he'll be fighting fit and fairly quick, I feel," Monaghan said.
Perez isn't overselling where Cadillac is today. "Of course, it's very early days. We are only on our sixth race and there is a sort of culture that is building," he said. But he thinks the ownership makes the trajectory inevitable. "You're talking about General Motors and TWG. There are two great forces that are not going to stop until they get there."
Cadillac still has to prove it can rise fast enough to hand Perez the car he wants; the team is only months into its first campaign. The point Perez keeps returning to is that this isn't a comfortable semi-retirement — it's a chance to win an argument about his own ability, with a manufacturer he insists is only warming up.
