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Lately, Sergio has been hating rain more than usual.
Sergio always hated rain. Since he was a kid, rain has screwed over his life one way or another. Rain meant mud, null visibility, full wets, closed streets by floods in his hometown and living above a restaurant in a country he didn’t know. He didn’t like either of those things.
The only time he liked rain is when he was in Monaco with Max in their shared apartment. He liked the peace and quiet, Max and him sim racing with his friends online while Jimmy and Sassy, Max’s (their) cats, walked up to them and rubbed their tiny bodies against their legs, the drops of rain evident in their balcony. He only liked rain when his boyfriend and him shared it together. He liked it because Max liked it.
For the last few months, rain only meant lost Q3s and podiums.
He should’ve known, when he was put full wets in Monaco as a way to experiment if that strategy would work out, that every race from there will go downhill. Maybe he didn’t want to accept it in that moment, but he was in for a rude awakening.
A tiny part of him has always known he was part of a broken team. He saw it in Christian’s and Helmut’s eyes in Jeddah and Baku. Their eyes told him all he needed to know about the rest of his season: how he would break under pressure, how the updates will end his championship aspirations and how, perhaps, Max was just out of his league.
How foolish of him to think that his team would start seeing them as equals after two years. There’s no equals in Formula 1. There has never been.
When he signed that contract in 2020, a few weeks after his first race win, he knew he was giving a part of himself away. He heard the rumors, he saw them with his own two eyes. The second Red Bull seat is cursed, they always break down their drivers, nobody gets away from that seat unscathed.
Almost three years in Red Bull had showed him how right those rumors were.
He remembers Alex telling him one time, just before his signing was official, to get a therapist, that he would need them as his seasons pass by. He didn’t believe him at the time, too happy about having a second chance at a big team, so he never entertained the idea that being in Red Bull would have a toll on his mental health. He was wrong, of course.
He’s been wrong way too many times, it seems.
As he sits in his car outside the parking lot of a grocery store in Milton Keynes, freshly out of the Red Bull Racing headquaters from a day full of training in the sim, the rain splattering against his windows, he asked himself if all of this was worth it.
Anything less than a podium in a race felt like failure. Anything outside a top 5 in qualifying felt like hell would break loose. Anything more than 3 tenths to Max felt like Helmut was screaming in his ear inside his radio. Everything he did, everything he fought for, seemed meaningless when his results were ruined by bad strategies and things out of his control.
Of course, the media hasn’t stopped asking him, or anybody for that matter, about his gap to Max. That’s what everybody was focusing on. He knew it wasn’t Max’s fault being this good, being the golden boy. From the moment he was told his role in the team, he knew what he was in for. He loved that about Max. His excellency, his talent, his passion for the sport, even if other people criticized him for not celebrating properly or being as enthusiastic as other champions for his wins, he knew Max deep down cared more than he showed. He knew his boyfriend like he knew the palm of his hand. He was the one who held him almost every night. He was the one that saw him before and after a race. He was the one that shared many roofs with him.
His problem wasn’t the gap to Max, Red Bull, his sponsors or him couldn’t care less about a 100 or 200 point difference. What frustrated Sergio was that he wasn’t allowed to try to fight Max, even when he knew he was going to lose. He just wanted to try, he wanted to prove to himself he could give a champion a hard time more than once. He wanted a chance.
He loved Red Bull. He loved every engineer, mechanic, media team and every person that made this team what it is today. How could he not love them when they took him under their wing when he left Racing Point? How could he not give his heart away to the people that cheered him on in every podium and win he has ever gotten?
Red Bull was his family. Alice, Hugh, Christian, and even Helmut, when he wasn’t being awful, were his family and lived inside his beating heart. Sergio was always going to be Sergio Perez, the man who had so much love that he didn’t know where to put it. Red Bull, with its faulty strategies, loud speakers and messy marketing, was always going to be the team he would bleed for in a war, even if it left scars that couldn’t be covered for the enemies to see.
But, he was starting to understand, that the love he stored for them wasn’t reciprocated.
Sometimes, late at night, while Max was sleeping in his chest, snoring away his nightmares and dreams, he thought about a new driver coming in after him, him retiring to start his own businesses in Mexico, promoting motorsport and marrying Max like they always planned. He imagined that new driver, maybe a junior from their academy, the next golden boy that could give Max a run for his money, with his side of the garage, in his seat. Would they let them fight wheel to wheel? Would he get better strategies? Would they change for him? Were they capable of change?
Was Sergio not someone worth changing for?
Was all of this pain worth it?
Suddenly, Max knocked on the window of his car, taking Sergio out of his trance.
Max laughed. “Open up! Look what I found!”
Sergio rolled his eyes playfully, his heart beating the same way as it always does when Max is near him and he opened the passenger door, Max sitting down and closing it.
“Shit, it’s freezing outside, but look! A Kit Kat! And it has your name on it! I thought they only sold these in Guadalajara!” Max put the chocolate bar up for Sergio to see, drops of rain all over his seat.
Sergio smiled at his boyfriend, blushing a little at his antics. Max’s eyes sparkled. Right then and there, he decided.
Yes, this is worth it. If I get to share a team with you, all the years of pain are worth it.