“learn and innovate in business”

Checo Pérez moves from his known area when it comes to business. His mindset is versatile and restless and he expresses it in his activities leading up to his second Grand Prix under the Red Bull Racing identity.

His agenda in Mexico does not only cover motorsports, as it included a visit to the Cumbre de Negocios/Business Summit in Querétaro, where some 70 international and national panelists gathered, who are leaders in the business and industrial sector. In his talk, Pérez said key words such as: innovate and learn in business, because life in Formula 1 has an end.

_How will you seek to innovate and in which business sectors will you invest?

“I like real estate and learning. When my career in Formula 1 ends, my cycle as a driver will end and I want to learn from other worlds. The most comfortable thing for me would be to stay in this, I have done it all my life. But I want to grow and innovate in other areas and everything will come in due course”, Checo Pérez replied to El Economista.

At 32 years of age, the Mexican midfielder plays a large part in the economic income generated by the Grand Prix. According to data from the Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism of Mexico City (Canaco CDMX), it is estimated that the 2022 race will leave an economic spill of 15,675 million pesos, an amount that will exceed 13.6% to the previous edition, with an expected attendance of 344,000 spectators during the three days of the event at the Hermanos Rodríguez Autodrome.

At his age, he has already set foot on the investment field. With Kavak, one of its nine current sponsors (including Banorte, Inter.mx, Claro, Telcel, Mobil, Uniclick, Xades, Jalisco) has access to shares of the unicorn company at the current share price of the moment.

Two years after his contract with Red Bull Racing ends, his economic capacity is very solid. In his second year with the Austrian team he had a salary increase of 3 million dollars, which placed him among the 10 highest paid drivers. The specialized motorsports site, Racing News 365, published last January the list of salaries of each of the drivers registered in F1. Checo Pérez will receive 8 million, well below Lewis Hamilton’s 40 million dollars with Mercedes.

The sponsors swell the numbers. Only what the Jalisco brand invested this year to join the helmet and the image of Checo, amounted to 25 million pesos, which come from the entity’s Secretary of Tourism and Trusts. The SecturJal indicates that the brand “Jalisco is Mexico” with Checo will be exposed to an average audience of 87.4 million people for a Grand Prix, that is, around 2,000 million people worldwide during 2022.

José Perales, a business, economy and finance journalist at Whitepaper tells this newspaper that Checo Pérez’s fortune is around 30 million dollars, which he is using to diversify his investments such as in the real estate sector and in Team México, which will compete in the UIM E1 World Championship for electric boats that starts in 2023.

_ Why is it a good option to invest in the real estate sector in Mexico?

“Although the real estate industry registered a downturn, like many others, during 2020, it is already recovering. In fact, it shows growth, albeit slow, but sustained. In addition to the CDMX, State of Mexico, Jalisco and Nuevo León; in the Bajío, it is also accelerating in municipalities of Querétaro such as El Marqués, Corregidora, San Juan del Río and Tequisquiapan”, explains José Perales.

At the Business Summit in which Checo spoke with Oscar Peralta, president of the Mexican Council for Foreign Trade (COMCE), he hinted that the bet would be in Querétaro.

“The good land that they are going to give me here (…) How it has grown and how beautiful and father it is, I liked it a lot, I came from the airport by helicopter, I was able to see a large part of the city and it seemed incredible to me”.

During the Meet the Fans in which Pérez and Max Verstappen appeared at the Soumaya Museum theater, Arturo Elías Ayub, Director of Strategic Alliances and Content for America Móvil and Fundación Telmex, told this outlet that the Czech-investor profile he looks with good eyes and they would enter to support him in case he requests it.

“The life of any athlete is short, they earn good money, but it lasts a few years and people who reach the top like Checo Pérez are very intelligent, not only are they gifted for sports, they also have very sophisticated and advanced minds to be 1 or 2 in the world. I see well that he wants to start investing because his career does not have so many years left. If there is an interesting project that suits all of us, surely ask us. We will analyze it with great pleasure”.

At the closing of the event in the meeting with the fans, Elías Ayub asked Checo a question: “If you were a child again, what would you tell me to convince me to invest in your career?”

Perez replied: “I would do the same, I wouldn’t have another weapon, I wanted to go to Europe so much that I would have done the same thing. I have no doubt that I would have convinced you again.”

marisol.rojas@eleconomista.mx