Sergio Perez has given a detailed account of his involvement in placing Force India into administration in 2018, a move he says was essential to the team’s survival and its eventual transformation into Aston Martin.
Force India, which began life as Jordan in 1991 before passing through Midland and Spyker ownership, had competed under that name since 2008 when Vijay Mallya took charge. By 2018, Mallya was embroiled in financial and legal difficulties, and the High Court in London ordered the team into administration, setting a 90-day deadline to find a new owner.
Perez, who raced for the team from 2014 to 2020, said he was personally owed a full year’s salary at the time. Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, he explained that the situation escalated when his manager, Julian Jakobi, discovered that an unpaid supplier had filed a winding-up petition against the team — a step that could have forced its closure.
“I had no idea about law, but I was owed some money. They didn’t pay my salary for the entire year,” Perez said. “We were having a bit of a delay, but then my manager told me that there was a winding-up petition from one of the suppliers that hadn’t been paid. That means they can basically shut down the company, and the whole team will lose their jobs.”
Racing Against A Legal Clock
To pre-empt the winding-up petition, Perez and Jakobi initiated the administration process themselves. Perez believes that without this intervention, the team would not have survived in any form.
“We did the whole process to put the team in administration before the winding-up petition came in, because if we didn’t, the team would have gone bankrupt,” he said. “All the people, all the team [would have lost their jobs]. So at the time it was Force India, which is now Aston Martin. Aston Martin wouldn’t exist.”
The 90-day search for a buyer ended when Lawrence Stroll acquired the team while it remained under administration. The outfit was rebranded Racing Point under Stroll’s ownership before adopting the Aston Martin name in 2021.
Juggling Legal Meetings With Race Weekends
Perez described the period as uniquely demanding, since the administration process played out across a stretch of mid-season race weekends. He recalled holding calls with lawyers shortly before both qualifying and race sessions, at times replacing his usual pre-race engineering briefings with legal discussions.
He also spoke of having to reassure Force India’s staff directly, explaining that putting the team into administration was intended to protect their jobs rather than threaten them.
“I remember talking to all of the staff at one of the races, and telling them, ‘Look, I’m doing it because it’s only right for everyone here. Otherwise, you guys are gonna lose everything, all your jobs and so on,'” Perez said. “I ended up trying to be the best lawyer I could be for the team, and the best driver, trying to separate when I had to jump in the car.
“You couldn’t separate it at that point because it was at a stage that was very critical. So I was having meetings just before qualifying… And then before the race, instead of being with the engineers, I was in some other meetings, but I was there.”
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