2018: the year of great fear
Even before joining Red Bull in 2021, Sergio Perez achieved his first Formula 1 victory at the wheel of Racing Point, a team previously known as Force India and now present on the track as Aston Martin. Few would have imagined that the Mexican, besides playing the role of driver, was also a ‘lawyer’, having saved the aforementioned Force India from financial collapse.
This happened in 2018, the year in which the team owner, Vijay Mallya, had to face serious financial difficulties due to legal problems. Perez, a team driver since 2014, had not been paid for a whole year, but it was at that moment that he, together with his manager, decided to intervene to avoid the team’s bankruptcy: “I didn’t know anything about law, but they still owed me money. They hadn’t paid my salary for the whole year”, he recalled on the High Speed Performance podcast.
“There was some delay, but then my manager told me that one of the suppliers had declared bankruptcy. This meant they could close the company and the entire team would lose their jobs. I thought: “Wow”. Then I was told: “You can save the team”. We (Pérez and his management, ed.) started the whole procedure to put the team into administration before the bankruptcy request was formalized, because otherwise the team would have gone bankrupt. Everyone, the entire team, would have lost their jobs. The current Aston Martin would not exist. We had ninety days to find a buyer, and fortunately Lawrence Stroll stepped forward. In the end, he took over the team while it was in administration”.
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Behind the scenes
All operations that, as Perez recalls, took place regularly during the championship, with the current Cadillac driver meeting lawyers in addition to racing weekends: “It was crazy, because all this happened in the summer, when races were coming one after another at a fast pace. I remember talking to the lawyers just before getting in the car, even though I really didn’t understand anything – he continued – I remember having to explain it to the whole staff. Of course, it didn’t sound good: a driver putting his own team into administration. But during race weekends, I talked to everyone and said: “Look, I’m doing this because it’s better for everyone. Otherwise, you will lose everything: the job, everything”. Once I explained the situation, they calmed down a lot. I tried to be the best lawyer for the team and, at the same time, the best driver. You can try to keep these two worlds separate, but in such a critical phase it was practically impossible. I remember qualifying sessions where, just before getting in the car, I was still sitting at the table with the lawyers”.
