Sergio Perez has insisted his time away from Formula 1 this year was vital to “disconnect” after how his career with Red Bull came to an end last year.<\/p>\n
Perez endured a catastrophic period with Red Bull last season, scoring a wretched 49 points over the final 18 grands prix that cost Red Bull its hold on the constructors’ championship it had won for the previous two seasons.<\/p>\n
The Mexican driver was unable to dial into a car predominantly designed around team-mate Max Verstappen, exhausting avenues with set-ups, directional changes, and switches in components to try and get him comfortable.<\/p>\n
In two years, Perez had gone from finishing second in the drivers’ standings – albeit a distant one to Verstappen – to an also-ran, forcing the hand of then team principal Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko to release him after the season had concluded.<\/p>\n
After a period of contemplation, with little seen or heard about Perez over the past eight months, he is now back in F1 as part of a highly experienced driver pairing at Cadillac with Valtteri Bottas.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on this year, after being asked by RacingNews365 in a selected media session after confirmation of the driver line-up, Perez said: “For me, it was very important to have this time away from the sport, especially because it only became clear towards the end of last year that I was not going to continue with Red Bull.<\/p>\n
“So instead of jumping into something, just for staying on the grid, I needed that time to disconnect myself from the sport and to understand what I really wanted next in my career.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t very clear for me in the beginning, especially the first couple of months, what I wanted to do next.<\/p>\n
“But the more I talked to the Cadillac team, the more it became apparent that this is what excited me to come back. It’s a project. It’s just not going back to the grid with a regular team to fight for podiums and points. This is a whole project.<\/p>\n
“The dynamic, I feel, is different.”<\/p>\n
Unlike Bottas, who has kept himself firmly in the F1 spotlight with a third and reserve driver role with Mercedes, and who has stayed sharp by driving F1 machinery this year, Perez recognises he needs to get up to speed again.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old, though, has no qualms he will be fit, ready and able by the time the season starts in Australia next year in the first week of March.<\/p>\n
“I realised that I enjoyed training,” said Perez, who has not been totally idle this year. “I always thought I hated it, but this time that I had off, it made me realise that I really enjoy training, so I’ve been staying fit.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, I haven’t driven anything for a while, other than karting with my son, but there are some plans with the team to test a Formula 1 car before the end of the year.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, next year, with so much testing that we’re going to have, it’s going to make that dust go away extremely quickly.<\/p>\n
“I know what Formula 1 is about, and I will be ready to deliver from the first race onwards.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sergio Perez has insisted his time away from Formula 1 this year was vital to “disconnect” after how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-97927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97927","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=97927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}