Heartbroken Perez speaks for the first time after initiating legal proceedings against Force India

Sergio Perez initiated legal proceedings against Force India as the team owed him close to $4 million.

Vijay Mallya earlier today confirmed that Perez and BWT had initiated the legal action that had finally led to Force India going into administration.

Perez has now opened up about how heartbroken he was to be in the middle of all this mess and having to be the person who had to initiate this.

However, he revealed that a lot of the team members actually persuaded him to go ahead with it in order to save the jobs and ‘lives’ of the other 400 people involved with the team.

“The last month or so has been extremely tough for me with the situation that our team was and in the end I ended up in the middle,” he said as quoted by RaceFans.

“We got to a point where action had to be taken to protect the 400 people that work in the team.

“I should not really like to be involved in this because at the end of the day I’m just a driver and I’m here just to drive and try to focus. But then it got too much.

“I was asked by a couple of members of the team to go ahead and save the team and protect the 400 people that was working there. To me it was extremely hard emotionally and mentally. It’s really tough, [I] haven’t been able to focus on my driving and improving [at] being a racing driver.

“The picture is much bigger than it looks at the moment. We might go into a painful period but the outcome will be really good for all the team.” he added.

He was also quizzed about the $4 million that he was owed.

“It’s from last year, the money,” he said.

He also confirmed that the legal action was initiated in order to protect the team and not to get his money.