Sergio Perez number 11 Cadillac Formula 1 car on track during 2026 Chinese Grand Prix practice

Sergio Perez: 6 F1 Wins, 39 Podiums and the Cadillac Reset

November 12, 2026

Nov 12, 2026 · 7 min read·

Sergio Perez: 6 F1 Wins, 39 Podiums and the Cadillac Reset

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Formula 1 Driver Spotlight - where we pull one driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the number 11.

The Short Version

Sergio Perez, known everywhere as Checo, is the most successful Mexican driver in Formula 1 history. Across 301 Grand Prix starts he has 6 wins, 39 podiums, 3 pole positions and a championship runner-up finish in 2023. He waited longer for his first win than any driver who ever lived, then spent four seasons as Max Verstappen's teammate at Red Bull. Now, at 36, he is back on the grid building a brand new team from zero with Cadillac.

From Guadalajara to the Grand Prix Grid

Sergio Michel Perez Mendoza was born on January 26, 1990, in Guadalajara, Jalisco. Racing was already the family business. His father, Antonio Perez Garibay, had raced himself, and Checo was in a kart at age six.

The climb ran through Formula BMW, then British Formula 3, where he won the National Class title in 2007, then GP2, where he finished runner-up in 2010. Along the way he picked up backing from Escuderia Telmex, the motorsport arm connected to Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim. That support is a real part of the story, and so is the fact that he kept delivering results once he had it.

He made his Formula 1 debut with Sauber at the 2011 Australian Grand Prix. One year later, at the 2012 Malaysian Grand Prix, he put a Sauber on the podium in second place in a wet-dry race that he very nearly won outright. That result put him on McLaren's radar, and he spent 2013 there. It did not work, and he was out after a single season.

The Long Middle, and the Win Nobody Saw Coming

What followed was seven seasons in the midfield with Force India and then Racing Point. Perez built a reputation in those years as the best tire manager on the grid, the guy who could make a set last ten laps longer than anyone thought possible and turn a sixth-place car into a fourth-place result.

What he did not have was a win. By the end of 2020 he had made 189 starts without one.

Then came the Sakhir Grand Prix on December 6, 2020. Perez was hit on the opening lap in a tangle with Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc and dropped to last place. He drove all the way back, inherited the lead when Mercedes made a pit-stop error, and won. It was his 190th start, which broke the record for the longest wait to a maiden Formula 1 victory. The previous mark was Mark Webber at 130. It was also the first win by a Mexican driver in 50 years, since Pedro Rodriguez took the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix.

The Red Bull Years

Sergio Perez waving to fans on the drivers parade in Red Bull Racing kit at the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix — Perez on the drivers parade at the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix, the season he finished runner-up in the championship. (Photo: Lukas Raich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Red Bull signed him for 2021, and he repaid them almost immediately. He won in Azerbaijan that June. Then at the title decider in Abu Dhabi he produced the defensive drive that fans still argue about, holding up a much faster Lewis Hamilton on laps 20 and 21 and handing Verstappen roughly seven seconds. Verstappen got on the radio and called him a legend. Without those two laps, the race, and the championship, look very different.

2022 was his best year for raw wins. He took Monaco in a chaotic wet-dry race by 1.1 seconds, becoming the first Mexican to win there, then added Singapore from the front. He was the first driver to win both of those street races in the same season since Sebastian Vettel in 2011. Eleven podiums, third in the standings.

2023 was the closest he came to the top. He won from pole in Saudi Arabia and won again in Azerbaijan, led the championship early, and finished the year second behind Verstappen with 285 points. That is the high-water mark of his career.

Then it fell away. In 2024 he took four podiums in the first five races and never saw another one, finishing eighth with 152 points. Red Bull released him at the end of that season despite a contract that ran longer, and Perez sat out all of 2025.

By the Numbers

Here is the career so far. Every figure below is a Formula 1 World Championship number, current through the 2026 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Sergio Perez Formula 1 career statistics through the 2026 Brazilian Grand Prix. Graphic by Happy Hour Racing.

The Cadillac Reset

In August 2025, Cadillac announced Perez and Valtteri Bottas as the driver pairing for its debut Formula 1 season. Two veterans, both coming off a year on the sidelines, hired to turn a brand new team into a real one. Perez is contracted to stay through at least 2029.

Nobody should pretend year one has been fun. Through 20 races in 2026 Perez has scored zero points, his best finish is 14th, and Cadillac is the only team on the grid yet to open its account. He has been blunt about it in public, saying the car has not developed fast enough. He has also said this is one of the best seasons he has driven, because the job right now is feedback, direction and building something that works in 2027 and beyond. Both things can be true.

Here is how he summed up the Brazilian Grand Prix on November 8, after another race spent scrapping in the back half of the field.

Off the Track

Perez married Carola Martinez in Guadalajara in June 2018, and they have four children. He started the Checo Perez Foundation in 2012, which works with children in Mexico, including orphans and kids being treated for cancer. He also runs a powerboat racing team, SP11 Team Mexico.

The thing that really defines him off the track is what he means at home. The Mexico City Grand Prix turned into one of the loudest weekends on the calendar during his Red Bull years, and the stadium section still roars for him. He has said more than once that racing for Mexico is the part of the job he refuses to put down.

Fun Stats

He is the most successful Mexican driver in Formula 1 history, with 6 wins to Pedro Rodriguez's 2.
His 2022 Monaco and Singapore double made him the first driver to take both of those street races in one season since Sebastian Vettel in 2011.
He has 39 podiums, and 20 of them came in just two seasons, 2022 and 2023.
The Sakhir win is the only Grand Prix victory Racing Point ever scored before the team was renamed Aston Martin for 2021.
Only 3 of his 301 starts began from pole, which tells you how much of his record was built on Sundays rather than Saturdays.

The Bottom Line

Checo Perez spent 189 races waiting for a win, got it in the most improbable way possible, and then spent four years at the sharp end of the grid. The Cadillac chapter is the hardest racing of his life, and he signed up for it on purpose. If that team ever gets good, a lot of the groundwork will have his number 11 on it.