Sergio Perez reveals how Helmut Marko paid £6,000 per hour during his early days with Red Bull.
Sergio Perez has spoken about his difficult start at Red Bull and how Helmut Marko stepped in with an unexpected solution.
But it wasn’t just this solution that caught Perez’s attention — it was the price tag that came with it, something he still finds hard to believe years later.
Helmut Marko’s intervention for Sergio Perez came at high cost
Speaking on The Cracks Podcast, Sergio Perez explained that Helmut Marko personally paid for a sports psychologist to help him regain his confidence.
Perez struggled to find consistency early on, and Red Bull quickly decided that mental support might help him settle in.
“As soon as I arrived at Red Bull, in the first races when I didn’t get results, [I was told]: ‘What you need is a psychologist. You have to see a psychologist.’
“I was open to everything, of course. So I talk to the psychologist… and one day he arrives at the Red Bull factory and says: ‘Hey, there’s a bill for you — six thousand pounds from the psychologist. Can you send it to Helmut, please? He’ll pay it.’”
Perez joked that even though he didn’t foot the bill himself, he couldn’t forget the number. “It was six thousand pounds for one call!” he exclaimed.
Sergio Perez says mental support helped turn results around
After those early sessions, Sergio Perez settled into life at Red Bull. He took his first win for the team at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and added four more podiums before the end of the season.
“So Helmut says: ‘How did it go? Perfect — with this session we’re good.’ And that’s how we lasted three years, cured with the psychologist. Results started coming. In the end, the call worked.”
He admitted that while therapy couldn’t fix later issues with the car’s handling, the mental reset early on helped him adjust to the demands of driving alongside Max Verstappen.
Perez left Red Bull at the end of the 2024 season, but his story offers a rare glimpse into the human side of Formula 1 — where success often requires just as much mental clarity as mechanical precision.
Read More: Sergio Perez recalls how one Red Bull mistake briefly put him ahead of Max Verstappen
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