Sergio Perez driver profile: the comeback with Cadillac
Sergio Perez left Formula 1 at the end of 2024 with a reputation that had been steadily dismantled over two difficult seasons. He is back in 2026 with Cadillac, and the team that hired him did so for reasons that have very little to do with lap time alone.
Sergio Perez: Fast Facts
- Full name: Sergio Michel Perez Mendoza
- Date of birth: 26 January 1990
- Born in: Guadalajara, Mexico
- Nationality: Mexican
- F1 debut: 2011, Sauber
- Previous teams: Sauber, McLaren, Force India, Racing Point, Red Bull Racing
- First win: 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix, from last place on lap one
- Best season: championship runner-up, 2023
- 2026 team: Cadillac Formula 1
- Car number: 11
- Team-mate: Valtteri Bottas
The Sakhir race
If you want one race that explains Perez, it is Sakhir in 2020.
He was hit on the opening lap, spun, and rejoined last. He then drove back through the entire field to win his first Grand Prix, in a Racing Point, in his tenth season. He had already been told he was losing the seat.
That result got him the Red Bull drive.
The Red Bull years
The four seasons at Red Bull are usually summarised as a decline, and the numbers support that reading. They also flatten out a lot of useful detail.
In 2021 he did the job the team signed him for, most obviously in Abu Dhabi, where holding up Lewis Hamilton for several corners materially affected a championship. In 2023 he won two races and finished the season as championship runner-up, which is the second-best result of any Red Bull driver in that era.
Then it came apart. The car became increasingly narrow in its operating window, and Perez could not find it. By 2024 the qualifying gap to Max Verstappen had become unignorable and the seat went to somebody else.
Whether that was a driver problem or a car problem is a genuinely contested question. What is not contested is that the same thing has now happened to several drivers in that car.
Why Cadillac signed him
A brand new team entering Formula 1 has a specific hiring problem. It does not need the fastest available driver. It needs drivers who can tell it what is wrong with the car, work reliably through the first difficult seasons, and give the operation credibility while it finds its feet.
Perez and Valtteri Bottas between them have well over 500 Grand Prix starts, race wins, and years of experience inside championship-winning organisations. For a team building from nothing, that is worth more than raw pace.
There is a commercial dimension too, and it would be naive to pretend otherwise. Perez brings the Mexican market, a Grand Prix in Mexico City, and a level of sponsorship interest that few drivers can match.
What he has to prove
Perez has nothing left to prove about speed on his day and everything to prove about consistency across a season.
Cadillac is the ideal place to answer that question, because for once the car will not be the variable everyone argues about. In a team where expectations start low, a driver either delivers reliably or he does not, and there is nowhere to point.
For current standings and the latest, see our Formula 1 coverage. Profile last updated 2 September 2026.