Sergio Perez has revealed he had an option to join Mercedes before his early career journey resulted in a seat at McLaren.<\/p>\n
Perez joined the F1 grid in 2011 with Sauber and impressed with his early results which included three podiums during the 2012 season.<\/p>\n
The following year, Perez joined McLaren alongside Jenson Button, replacing Lewis Hamilton, who made the switch to Mercedes.<\/p>\n
However, Perez has revealed he had various options open to him – including Ferrari, having been associated with its junior programme during his opening seasons on the grid.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very quick,\u201d Perez told the Cracks podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was the most wanted driver on the grid – normally young drivers have that, when a young driver arrives and gets results quickly, all teams want him because they don\u2019t know what he can achieve.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I had three different options from three big teams, one obviously Ferrari because I got to F1 thanks to Ferrari, being part of their academy, and the logical thing was to follow that path, but Ferrari couldn\u2019t offer me a seat until 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was already desperate, young, you want it already, it was the best team to start fighting for championships, and I was desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez revealed that had Hamilton opted to stay put at McLaren, he could have made the switch across to the Brackley-based squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd out of nowhere the option comes – I never thought, I always thought there were two teams I\u2019d never drive for: McLaren and Red Bull, because they always have their drivers forged through their academy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then McLaren comes. They were nervous because Hamilton was leaving, and if Hamilton didn\u2019t go to Mercedes I also had the Mercedes option.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo McLaren came very convinced and offered me a contract, and I took it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez only lasted one season at McLaren as a disappointing campaign saw him depart the Woking-based outfit at the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sergio Perez has revealed he had an option to join Mercedes before his early career journey resulted in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,827,817,830,828,831,829,826,813,816,823,825,824,822,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-405127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-f1-calendar","13":"tag-f1-live","14":"tag-f1-results","15":"tag-f1-standings","16":"tag-ferrari","17":"tag-formula-1","18":"tag-formula1","19":"tag-lewis-hamilton","20":"tag-max-verstappen","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-racing","23":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}