How F1 star racked up crazy phone bill during new team search

Sergio Perez, Checo Perez, Red Bull, United States, 2024 — Photo: © IMAGO

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How F1 star racked up crazy phone bill during new team search

Sergio Perez's journey to F1 was not a simple one

Kerry Violet F1 News Editor

F1 editor and journalist covering motorsport since 2024.

Friday 9 January 2026 22:43

To say F1 is a competitive sport is an understatement.

There may be two more spots on the grid in 2026 but that still means there are only 22 full-time seats on offer to the millions of aspiring F1 drivers.

But hey, everyone has to start somewhere right?

Article continues under video

Though many stars of today's F1 grid come from an enormous amount of family money, Sergio Perez came from a relatively humble background compared to some of his fellow F1 stars.

Now don't get me wrong, a young Perez may not have had family billions to fall back on, but his family were still well off.

His father Antonio Perez Garibay also had extensive connections in motorsport having previously been a driver himself, something which when paired with financial resources, allowed him to secure crucial sponsorship from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim for a young Checo.

But in a recent interview, Perez has revealed he had to put in a serious shift to find one of his first teams early on in his career, recalling an amusing story of how he managed to rack up a costly phone bill at the expense of securing a seat.

How did Sergio Perez's F1 journey take off?

In a recent appearance on the Cracks Podcast, Perez touched on his move to Germany at just 14 to pursue his motorsport dreams, something which he described as 'lonely' and still the hardest thing he has ever had to do in his journey to F1 to this day.

Speaking to podcast host Oso Trava, the Mexican racer reflected on how he got his start in F1, saying: "Back then, Formula 1 wasn't something people aspired to because it didn't exist in our country. Here we only had IndyCar. We had some very good drivers, and IndyCar was like the most normal category, right, for a Mexican? You're in the United States. It was kind of the easiest and most achievable thing to do.

After convincing his financial backer and his family that a move to Europe was the right thing to do, Perez recalled the immense effort that resulted in eventually receiving multiple team offers at the start of his career.

The now 35-year-old continued: "I convinced Carlos to send me to Europe. I got offers from all the teams. It's a really cool story because I was going to school, but I had to set my alarm, right? So, I would wake up early, like between two and five in the morning, to call the teams. I would call all the teams to ask for offers. One by one. I already had the list of all the teams, so I started one by one.

"I would say to them, 'Hey, this is Sergio Perez.' I spoke very poor English, so it was difficult, but I had a very clear line...'I'm Sergio Perez, I have a very big sponsor, the biggest in Mexico,'...but they don't have much money to invest right now. So, then some of them hung up on me, some sent me a proposal two weeks later, and so on.

"After about a week or two, my mum came to me and said, ‘Hey, what are you doing? We've got a huge phone bill, haven't we?’

"It was very, very expensive to call Europe back then. So, we spent a fortune on the phone."

But Perez's persistence paid off, with his frequent phone calls eventually resulting in the young karter finding a team that had a car for him.

The rest is history and though the ex-Red Bull star got dealt a poor hand when he was dropped from the team at the end of 2024, all eyes will be on his comeback with new team Cadillac in the upcoming 2026 championship.

F1 Sergio Perez