In just his second year as a Formula 1 driver, Sergio Perez has been hailed by many as a world champion in waiting. JOE caught up with the Latin American speedster to talk about maturity, Mexico and sibling rivalry.
It’s fair to say there’s never a dull moment in Formula 1 in 2012. Michael Schumacher’s former pre-eminence – a bit like the mid-90s tennis and Pete Sampras, and the Spanish soccer team these days – threatened the equilibrium for a while. You needed to be a hardcore fan to appreciate that sort of brilliance; the more casual observer could be forgiven for finding the predictability a bit boring.
Schumacher is still on the grid in 2012 but the shadow he casts is much shorter now. In fact, he’s the one who finds himself looking up the proverbial exhaust pipes of others as he struggles against advancing age and a weaker set of wheels.
As the German, post-retirement and return to the fold, copes with being an also-ran the playing field at the top of the pile has levelled out. It’s not that the F1 personalities of the day are a whole lot less talented, but both at drivers’ and constructors’ level everything is much more competitive.
In the drivers’ championship, there are six different F1 world champions, breaking the record of five which took the grid in 1970, while seven different drivers won the first seven Grand Prix of the year. In the constructors’, apart from the pace-setting Red Bull-Renault (Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber) McLaren-Mercedes are the only other team to have won two Grand Prix, and yet they’re only fourth in the constructors’ standings.
That new-found competitiveness, allied to the arrival of the dedicated Sky Sports F1 channel at the start of the 2012 season in March, has resulted in an injection of interest in the sport in this part of the world.
And while drivers like Vettel, Webber, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and current leader Fernando Alonso have taken many of the plaudits, there has still been room for others to make a name for themselves, and arguably the most prominent of those has been 23-year-old Sergio Perez, a Mexican who is in just his second year in F1.
Perez first drew the attention of many following a shocking crash in the Monaco Grand Prix in 2011, but you could hardly say he flinched when he returned there a year later – he set the fastest lap on the day, after all.
It’s achievements like that which have marked him out as a star in the making. That flying lap at Monaco was no flash in the pan – he nabbed his first ever podium finish in the second Grand Prix of the year when runner-up to Alonso in Malaysia, and then produced an exceptional driving display in Canada in June, finishing in third place despite having started 15th on the grid.
Recalling his Canadian experience when we met him in Switzerland recently, he said, “When you start 15th on the grid, getting to the podium is an amazing achievement. We started well, I was aggressive and the car was performing well. I had had some trouble [during qualifying] on Saturday, but it was great to be able to pick up so many places in the race.”
Those two podium finishes, as well as the fastest lap in Monaco, have underlined his improvement this year. Some of that can be put down to the 2012 car developed by Sauber – the team have amassed 60 points to date, outstripping last year’s total of 44 and we’re still just halfway through the season – but Perez has clearly improved too. What does he put it down to?
You get the feeling he’s thought about this too, and the answer comes without hesitation. “Maturity,” he says. “I’m more experienced this year. I take better decisions, and I’m able to extract more from the car now than I was able to do last year.”
The fact that arguably his most impressive driving performance to date had come in North America was also something he cherished.
“It was good to be on the podium in Canada because it is not so far from Mexico and there were a lot of Mexicans there. I went back home for a few days after that and the reaction was brilliant. I get a lot of support from my own people. There are crowds of people everywhere I go.”
Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, the Manchester United striker, is probably Mexico’s most famous sportsman but Perez isn’t far behind him these days, and the fact that his brother Antonio is one of the stars of the NASCAR Toyota Series in Mexico only helps to build the association between the Perez name and big-game motorsports.
Talk of his brother leads to the obvious question. Irish brothers are known to fight like cats, so is there any lasting rivalry between the Perez siblings? “No, no, absolutely not,” says Sergio. “He drives in NASCAR so it’s a different event and we don’t have any rivalry. We support each other a lot, I went to his race when I was home in Mexico to support him, and gives me great support too, so there’s no problems between us. Both of us can do well.”
Sergio Perez, pictured at the launch of the Certina Limited Edition DS Podium watch at the Sauber F1 factory in Switzerland recently
While the past couple of races haven’t exactly gone to plan – a ninth place finish in the European Grand Prix at Valencia, followed by an early retirement at Silverstone last weekend – there are few who’d be surprised if he gets to challenge for outright honours before the season is out.
After all, this is the year of the multiple winners. And there’s an extra incentive for Perez too, as the guys at Certina, who have sponsored the Sauber F1 team for the past eight years and recently launched their special Sauber-inspired limited edition F1 watch, have put aside a tantalising memento.
Just 2012 of Certina’s Limited Edition DS Podium watches, inspired by the Sauber F1 team, have been manufactured; each of those is marked with a unique identifying number, and the Number 2 model was presented to the team’s principal, Peter Sauber, during the event at the Sauber F1 factory in Hinwil, Switzerland.
The Number 1? It’s in a Swiss bank vault, ready to be given to Sergio whenever he takes his first chequered flag and becomes a Grand Prix winner.
He will be hoping his wait for that particular timepiece is just as short as the last occasion Certina and Sauber offered a similar incentive – in 2008 Robert Kubica celebrated his maiden Grand Prix triumph in Canada, prompting the presentation of a limited edition Certina watch that had been pledged to him a couple of months previously.
Given the level of improvement he’s shown already in 2012, who’s to say an identical ceremony won’t be taking place before the Formula 1 season draws to a close in Brazil in November.
Certina’s DS Podium Limited Edition watch (pictured right) is available from Arnotts, retailing at €605. It was our Accessory of the Week recently. For more details click here.
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