How the race was won: Sergio Perez at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix
Born and raised in the racing family at Guadalajara, Mexico, Sergio and his older brother Antonio grew up for their future racing career. Like most F1 drivers, Perez started his junior career from karting, where he won the Mexican junior karting championship at age of 8. During his teenage years, Perez has competed in Formula BMW, A1 GP representing Mexico, before moving to GP2 for team Campos in 2008 and Arden in 2009. In 2010 he finished runner-up to Colombia's Pastor Maldonado.
Both Perez and Maldonado made their own full-season F1 debut in 2011, where Perez raced for Sauber and Maldonado for Williams. Perez scored his first F1 points by finishing 9th place at 2011 Spanish GP. He finished his rookie season at 16th place in drivers' standings.
Perez stayed with Sauber until his contract expired at the end of 2012. The Mexican took his maiden podium at the 2012 Malaysian GP after finishing 2nd place. Another one came from the Italian GP, where he nearly battled Lewis Hamilton for the win. Perez finished his sophomore season in 10th place.
After his poor performance with McLaren in 2013, Perez moved to Mercedes-powered Force India team for 2014 season onwards, where he finished 7th in the drivers' standings in 2016 and 2017. As the team changed its name into Racing Point in 2019, Perez still consistently scoring more points.
Perez started his 2020 season by finishing sixth place in Austrian and Styrian GPs, and seventh in Hungarian GP, until he tested positive of COVID-19 prior to British GP, causing him to miss the British and Anniversary GPs as well. But he continued to score more points from Spanish GP afterwards. Prior to finishing 2nd at Turkish GP, Perez announced to leave Racing Point at the end of 2020 season.
At the closing stages of the incident-packed Bahrain GP, Perez was in the podium position (third place), until he suffered engine failure on the final five laps of the race, causing him out of the race.
But then, at Sakhir GP, he put it into redemption. Perez' dream to win the F1 grand prix race came true after winning the Sakhir GP.
"I'm speechless. I hope I'm not dreaming, I have dreamt this moment. After the first lap the race was done, but we had tremendous pace and we knew what we had to do today. What happens [next year] is not in my hands at the moment but I want to keep going."
"It's been a while, so many years for it to come. I thought it was never going to come because I never had the car. Today everything panned out and we just had a tremendous race. We were pretty confident we were going to the end with good tyre life and were confident we could achieve the victory."
So, what's next for Perez after his first win?
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