Sergio Perez is preparing for his Formula 1 return with Cadillac while shedding the last of the baggage from a turbulent late-2024 exit from Red Bull, where he believes "everything was a problem" with him.
Perez rejoins the F1 grid this year after a season on the sidelines following Red Bull's decision to drop him for 2025 - as it mistakenly believed Liam Lawson, and then Yuki Tsunoda would achieve better results than Perez had during an increasingly poor 2024 season.
Along with Valtteri Bottas, Perez has a career reprieve from what will likely be his F1 swansong. They will be the experienced spearheads of the new General Motors-backed Cadillac project and Perez is bullish that it has the potential to become one of F1's biggest and best teams.
The six-time race winner wants Cadillac's progress to be his lasting F1 legacy much more than the limp end to his Red Bull stint - which he was clearly still moving past by the end of last year, as in an interview recorded in November but published in early January, Perez claims Red Bull was complaining about "almost everything" he did.
"At Red Bull, everything was a problem," says Perez in his appearance on Oso Trava's Cracks podcast in Mexico.
"If I was too fast, it was a problem, because, of course, it created a very tense atmosphere at Red Bull.
"If I was faster than Max, it was a problem. If I was slower than Max, it was a problem [laughs].
"So, everything was a problem. I also learned a lot. That in the circumstances I'm in, instead of complaining, I have to do the best I can, and get the most out of it."
'I was a distraction'
That Perez remark came off the back of a familiar retelling of his decline at Red Bull across the ground-effect era from 2022 to his final season in 2024: that car upgrades went against him, and that he had joined a "project made for Max", repeating a claim that ex-team principal Christian Horner once told Perez that Red Bull only raced with two cars because it was required to by the regulations.
Similarly, he reflected on a growing lack of confidence with the car, and feeling vulnerable because of the team's own actions and comments. In an answer about dealing with the challenge psychologically, Perez said "only someone who is mentally strong can survive something like that" when you "have your whole team against you publicly".
It is well established - not just as a Perez claim, but as a fact - that Red Bull's development direction within those seasons and as a whole three-year period kept turning benign cars that Perez could be competitive with into trickier to drive (but faster) cars that better suited Max Verstappen and left Perez struggling more and more.
This caused the end of his Red Bull career, and damage to his reputation. While not everybody will agree with Perez's interpretation of just how competitive he was or how well balanced the fight with Verstappen was in early 2022 and 2023, for example, nobody can really dispute his timelines or that Red Bull quite plainly pointed the finger at him.
"All this pressure starts, which was very hard, because, well, who is to blame? The driver," he says.
"Because you're not focused, because you're doing a lot of commercials or because you're doing other things."
The suggestion is that Red Bull told Perez he was not focused enough on the task at hand. This is at least consistent with ex-motorsport advisor Helmut Marko's outrageous comments that Perez's inconsistency was due to having a Mexican mentality (he wrongly identified Perez as South American in what he actually said but this just made it worse, not better).
Marko, like Horner, technical guru Adrian Newey, and a host of other senior figures, have all left Red Bull in the last couple of seasons. As Perez suspected, his successors as Verstappen's team-mate have flopped, and a third junior (Isack Hadjar) has been promoted for 2026.
"I remember when I was in my farewell with Christian, I said to him: 'Hey, Christian, what are you going to do when it doesn't work out with Liam?'," said Perez.
"'Well, there's Yuki'. And what are you going to do when it doesn't work out? 'No, we have lots of drivers'.
"I said to him: well, you're going to use them all. He said, 'Yes, I know'.
"We already knew, but there was also so much pressure that year. Christian had some problems, so it was also a bit that I was a distraction.
"Nobody talked about anything else but me, about my performance, about how badly I was doing."
A final dig - but focus is on future
What's happened since at Red Bull might give Perez a sense of twisted satisfaction given his treatment.
But instead Perez says he regrets that "everything was destroyed" at Red Bull - for the wider operation, not just himself - when "we had the team to dominate for the next 10 years".
It's impossible not to view these remarks as another, likely final big dig at Red Bull. But despite how it ended, Perez repeatedly expresses his broader gratitude towards Red Bull, and how much of a good relationship he has with people in the team and at the top of the company.
And this interview did not exactly come out of the blue, it has just gained more attention for the timing of it being published.
As 2025 progressed, and Perez's F1 return went from likely to finalised, Perez began to make a few increasingly barbed comments about Red Bull, the manner of his exit, his treatment and his reputation. What's emerged now are arguably the most pointed remarks yet.
That interview being recorded in November, but only released now, has given the unfortunate impression that Perez is still dwelling on the past when he should be focused on the future. Because it does seem a little odd in early January 2026, just weeks before you and your new team hit the track properly for the first time, to be speaking so pointedly about events from over a year ago.
While it will reflect how Perez feels about aspects of a very difficult time in his F1 career, it would be at least slightly unfair to assume Perez is still holding onto Red Bull bitterness at the expense of Cadillac focus. A November recording means this was just part of Perez's comeback tour, where he gave various interviews and said mostly similar things.
If it had been published back then, it would have gained some attention, but it would have just been part of a familiar narrative. Instead, it dropping in early January, at such a quiet time, affords it more oxygen and makes it look like more of a premeditated Red Bull attack than it was ever intended to be.
This might be the last time Perez talks about Red Bull for a while simply because his time on the sidelines is over. The only way to move is to...well, move on. He is doing that with Cadillac which, for better or worse, will be a fresh chapter in Perez's F1 story – and will replace any lingering narratives from his time at Red Bull.
"[I am excited] to enjoy this stage with my family, with my children," he said.
"My children are already at a more mature stage and I want them to see me, because I've always tried to convey to them what commitment is, what dedication is, what pressure is, what it means to want something, what it means to win a trophy and what it costs.
"I want to take them more. That's what excites me the most, enjoying it much, much more with my family, with my wife too. There was so much pressure at Red Bull that we forgot to enjoy it."
'Best year' in F1 was...2025?
While a lot of Perez's interviews have trodden similar ground to before, there were little snippets of additional detail or context here that he had not gone as far with previously.
He finally admitted, for example, that Red Bull did consider cancelling his contract in the middle of 2024. When that was reported prior to the summer break that year, it was criticised as being speculation and untrue.
And there is an interesting 'what if?' regarding what came after that, when Red Bull gave him one last chance for the final races.
After Red Bull finally started to make some progress with its car with Verstappen aligned with Perez on it being too difficult to drive around the summer of 2024, Perez was much stronger than he'd been for months with an upgraded floor in Azerbaijan, where he was quicker than Verstappen and on course to beat him.
But he crashed with Carlos Sainz unnecessarily at the very end of the race and missed out on a likely podium. Perez's claim he would have won that race is not correct, but it was clearly a much better performance - one he unfortunately could not repeat again that year. Had he done so, he may have kept his seat.
The reason? For Perez it is that he "didn't touch that floor again" after wrecking the car so badly in the Sainz shunt.
"The upgrades continued, but everything was for Max," he said.
"So, from then on, I was already two, three races, four races, five races behind, and I never had that car again. What would have happened? Who knows?"
While Perez must still be slightly bitter over how elements of his time at Red Bull played out, he did not exactly spend 2025 sulking and he certainly hasn't walked away from F1 licking his wounds. Otherwise, he wouldn't be returning.
His greater focus will obviously be on 2026 and Cadillac. That will help give him any final closure - a process that has already been assisted by the struggles of Lawson and Tsunoda, ultimately boosting Perez's own reputation for him, and prompting something of a reappraisal of the job he'd done in 2024 to get the results that looked so poor at the time but were still superior to his successors.
"I think it has been my best year in Formula 1, the one I didn't race and the one where everyone realised how successful I was," he said of 2025.
"And today it [what was achieved at Red Bull] has much more value."
