Dad Perez is trying again: he wants to be the next president of Mexico

Dad Perez, here we go again After a year away from the news, Sergio Perez is back in Formula 1 albeit in the difficult context of a debuting team like Cadillac. Together with the Mexican driver, the spotlight inevitably also turns back on Antonio Perez Garibay, the cumbersome and noisy father who often made up for the shortcomings of Checo’s shy and reserved character. Now, even with renewed political ambitions of a certain depth. Thus, after having sometimes supported the conspiracy theories according to which Max Verstappen had better quality material at his disposal than that intended for his son during the period in which the two shared the Red Bull garage, now the 66-year-old is back in the news but for reasons unrelated to Formula 1 and his son’s world title ambitions. During an interview with some Mexican journalists, Antonio Perez admitted that his goal now is… the presidency of Mexico. The presidency goal “You should never say never – he explains, quoted by the local newspaper El Siglo de Torreon – but this is my dream. My desire is to one day be the president of Mexico, just as my son dreamed of becoming a Formula 1 driver as a child. When I say that I have this goal, people tell me I’m crazy. But, well, I like being crazy, I like doing things that many others don’t do or don’t even dare to do”. Antonio Perez Garibay: political career (and blunders) However, it is not the first time that Papa Perez, known as Toño, is running for president of his country: already in 2022 the Mexican politician had tried to exploit his son’s global fame to self-promote himself in the campaign towards the 2024 elections, but then he was unable to overcome the competition within his own party, the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, better known as Morena, a populist formation left-wing, which was already expressed by the president of the time Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and who is still leading the country with President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. The controversial social photo with which Perez Garibay launched his presidential campaign in 2022. Currently a government delegate in the federal state of Jalisco (where his hometown of Guadalajara is) and in the past also a member of the Mexican Congress, dad Perez then made headlines for his lunatic declarations on his son Checo’s ambitions, for furious arguments with the sports press that follows Formula 1 and for homophobic phrases against Ralf Schumacher.