i arrived into the munich airport the
first hotel i stayed at was in the
middle of the motorway it was full of
trucks there the truck is stopped by
they sleep there for a couple of hours
and then make it point it was like wow
this is
this is not formula one this is far far
away from it
hi i'm sergio perez and i'm a driver for
red bull racing this is a story moving
from mexico to germany to pursue my
racing dream
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okay
so
we should just start with where else did
you grow up
i grew up in guadalajara in mexico
where were great years i have a lot of
friends pretty normal childhood
traveling around all mexico with my dad
and my brother
to every city in mexico one race after
the other
after the race we had to drive back home
sometimes 10 hour drive i would sleep on
the car and have my uniform to get into
the school
it's funny to think back monday morning
my dad always had to drive me straight
back into school
my older brother he was racing in
formula ford in the uk and i saw the
level of competitiveness they had in
europe and i knew okay if i want to make
it into formula one then i have to go to
europe but obviously the next factor was
finding the money
i was sponsored by carlos lim at the
time but he didn't want to do the job
into europe because he thought that i
was too young so i just went into the
bmw website and found all the team
contact details the emails basically i
emailed them all to try to convince them
to take me because i was a very good
mexican driver
and it was pretty funny because you know
with the time difference in mexico i had
to wake up four in the morning three in
the morning to make phone calls
and my parents were going mad at me
because the bill was very expensive and
i was like yeah i'm calling all the
teams
but in the end i got a proposal from all
the teams and they were all too
expensive and then all of a sudden i
found one that was very attractive very
cheap so i contacted a guy and the owner
kunta was very enthusiastic and there
was this connection
through the phone
i went on that plane with a one-way
ticket i went there like i don't know
when i'm going to come back what's next
in my in my life
i arrived into the munich airport the
first day was -20
i didn't have like good winter clothing
very cold extremely cold
the first hotel i stayed
in the middle of the motorway was full
of trucks there the truck is stopped by
they sleep there for a couple of hours
and then make it point
but as soon as i arrived there i went
into my little room
this is not only one
this is far far away from it yeah it was
just
a car in the garage
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i was totally on my own i was so lonely
literally i was there all day long like
four weeks i was just playing video
games all the time
because that's the only thing literally
i could do because i didn't have a cell
phone i didn't have internet in the
place
i stayed there like for two months and
go into the team boss he knew i was very
lonely there so he was building these
restaurants and once he finished it he
told me when you don't come and live
there i think it's much better than when
you are you can meet people
yeah for sure i want to go there so i
moved to the restaurant
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the restaurant was extremely nice and in
the middle of the village and at least i
can see people so i was just very happy
to be in that place
i lived with one chef but obviously i
had this crazy time zone
so i basically had the time zone from
mexico living in europe and then jeff
had to wake up very early so i was
always waking him up because i was like
on the computer watching the tv and so
on so he wasn't very happy with
with me being
there
with this crazy time zone that i had in
the middle of the night i got pretty
hungry so three four o'clock in the
morning i knew where all the food was so
and all the sausages everything like you
could literally like do a quick pasta in
like two minutes because everything is
done
so
i will go and get a schnitzel or
get some pasta in place and
then the next day he was like i'm
missing some of my food
the chef wasn't very happy with me
living there
it was my second season racing cars but
that was my first season in europe that
was great you know because i went to
germany hockenheim to nurburgring those
iconic circuits
so it was the two mechanics and my
engineer
they didn't speak much english and i
didn't speak much english either so we
could hardly communicate each other
our first race we were such a small team
only one car and we drove into in the
paddock and you see all these big teams
you know with a lot of cars and so on
and then there is this little trocky
with a single car
arrives there and
everyone was looking at us like
what you guys are doing here
after that the racing wasn't going that
well
i was just too
too lonely and the life outside the
racing was very difficult that really
brought my my performance down a lot and
it was always like maybe we don't do the
next race and so on i could see the
other drivers like with the trainers and
so on i had no idea what
i was like well you know maybe maybe i
should just go back home and
keep with my studies but on the other
side i was thinking no i cannot give up
and once i return to mexico i will never
come back so well maybe it's worth just
giving everything and
fight for it and
try to make it
i knew that if i keep doing well if i do
well in the season maybe i get a second
opportunity you know with a with a
bigger team
called carlos and and i could see that
they were motivated as well they sent me
to do f3 british f3 everything just
changed and i came into a fantastic team
they put me a trainer that they just
made me a
much better driver now it's getting
serious you know i'm i'm like the other
drivers i cannot stop until i'm a world
champion you know i'm not going to give
up
when you look back and take a moment to
reflect on what you've done how far
you've come i've been extremely lucky to
have such a good career in formula one
and it just started from
a crazy project from a crazy kid
bringing the people at 4am in the
morning not speaking english i'm just
very extremely proud of that kid no
matter how crazy your dream sounds it
can definitely be possible
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you