Perez: “I would have had the Mercedes option if Hamilton hadn’t gone to Brackley”

Perez’s return The 2026 season will be the first in the history of Cadillac in Formula 1, with the American team arriving in the Circus as the eleventh team together with another new entry such as Audi. Again, Cadillac, curiously, will bring back two drivers who did not take part in the last world championship: Valtteri Bottas on one side and Sergio Perez on the other, with Verstappen’s former teammate in Red Bull who will team up with the one who shared the Mercedes garage with Lewis Hamilton. Perez and Mercedes: a near-marriage A team, Mercedes, which never welcomed ‘Checo’ Perez, even though the Mexican was actually close to signing a contract with the Brackley company in 2013. After the first two championships in Formula 1 at the wheel of Sauber, where he surprised with three podiums achieved in 2012, the future winner of 6 GPs moved to McLaren to replace Lewis Hamilton, who signed with Mercedes, but the options for a move to the team Anglo-German also showed up for Perez. The 35-year-old from Guadalajara admitted it on the Cracks podcast, more than ten years later, recalling how much Mercedes, and not only, expressed interest in him: “It was all very fast – he said – I was the most sought after driver on the grid: usually young drivers have this position, and when a young driver arrives and gets results quickly, all the teams want him because they don’t know what he can achieve. So I had three different options from three big teams, one obviously being Ferrari because I arrived in F1 thanks to Ferrari, being part of their academy, and the logical thing was to follow that path, but Ferrari couldn’t offer me a place until 2014. I was already desperate, young, I already wanted it, it was the best team to start fighting for championships, and I was desperate.” If it hadn’t been for Hamilton… Having moved to McLaren, Perez explained the reason why the move to Mercedes didn’t happen, thanks to Hamilton’s choice to land in Brackley: “Suddenly the opportunity presented itself: I would never have imagined it, I always thought that there were two teams I would never drive for: McLaren and Red Bull, because they always have their drivers trained in their academy. Then McLaren arrived. They were nervous because Hamilton was leaving, and what if Hamilton hadn’t gone at Mercedes, I too would have had the Mercedes option. So McLaren came very convinced and offered me a contract, and I accepted it.”