Exclusive: Sergio Perez shares 'doubts' before F1 renaissance: 'I'm still one of the best out there'

Sergio Perez admits he had doubts about returning to Formula 1 after a year away from the sport, but believes his performances for Cadillac have already provided the validation he needed.

Perez returned to the grid this season after losing his Red Bull seat at the end of 2024, with the Mexican spending a year away from racing before being handed the opportunity to lead Cadillac's inaugural F1 campaign alongside Valtteri Bottas.

The results have so far been difficult to quantify. Cadillac remains without a point after the opening 11 grands prix, with Perez's best classified finish a P14 at both the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and Silverstone.

Yet there have been glimpses of what the team can achieve, most notably in Monaco, where Perez crossed the line in P10 before a post-race penalty dropped him out of the points.

For Perez, though, the significance of his return extends beyond the standings.

Asked how different the new era of F1 feels compared with the one he left behind, the 36-year-old offered a surprisingly simple assessment before offering a more introspective perspective.

"No, it's similar," Perez tells RacingNews365 during an exclusive interview. "To be honest, I had doubts about coming back to the sport after my year out.

"But when I came back, I was delivering, and I was performing at a very high level. I proved to myself that I'm still one of the best out there.

"So that gave me a lot of satisfaction in coming back, regardless of how competitive the car is. The people who understand the sport, they understand how I'm performing, and that's the most important."

Making his case

That sense of vindication is particularly pertinent given the circumstances of Perez's Red Bull departure.

After joining the team in 2021, he delivered five victories and approaching 1000 points alongside Max Verstappen, helping Red Bull to two constructors' championships while establishing himself as a highly effective second driver.

But, after a difficult second half of 2023, his last season in Milton Keynes unravelled.

Perez scored only 49 points across the final 18 rounds as Red Bull's increasingly difficult car became a major talking point, while the pressure surrounding his future intensified despite having signed a contract extension earlier that year.

His struggles were real, but so too were the circumstances surrounding them. Red Bull's car became increasingly difficult to extract performance from, with its characteristics proving particularly troublesome for drivers other than Verstappen. Perez's replacements, Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda, subsequently encountered their own difficulties in the second seat.

Now, in a completely different environment, the six-time grand prix winner feels his underlying ability is easier to judge.

"Obviously, first of all, people understood the circumstances I was in before, and now they can see my true speed, my true talent, and that's a big satisfaction, because it just shows how hard I've worked in the past as well and how much I had to deal with," he adds.

'I need more'

That talent has long been particularly evident on Sundays. Perez has built a career around extracting results from machinery that has often been short of outright pace, with his tyre management regarded as one of his defining strengths.

Before joining Red Bull, he established himself as one of F1's most reliable midfield performers, while his Sakhir victory in 2020 for Racing Point provided a fitting reward for years of maximising imperfect packages.

Cadillac, however, represents a different challenge. Rather than being asked to extract the maximum from an established midfield operation, Perez is helping construct one from the ground up.

The team has made progress, but the scale of its task has been exposed at times, with weaknesses in pace and tyre management preventing it from consistently converting promising moments into points.

That has not diminished Perez's enthusiasm. If anything, the freedom of a new beginning appears to have revitalised him.

"Yeah. Yeah, definitely," Perez agrees when asked if he feels more freedom as part of Cadillac's fledgling project.

"I'm really happy, to be honest. I'm happy, I'm enjoying it, but, like I say, I need more. I'm a racing driver, and I'm here for performance."

And that final point perhaps best explains Perez's current mindset.

His return was never simply about proving he belonged in Formula 1 again. It was about demonstrating that the difficult final chapter at Red Bull did not define him.

Six victories, 39 podiums and more than 1,638 points already tell one part of the story. Cadillac is allowing Perez to write another.

The results may not yet reflect the resurgence he envisaged. But, in his own eyes, the most important verdict has already been delivered: Perez knows he still has the pace to compete.

And now he wants a car capable of showing it.