Things That Make Me Love Checo (and The Lessons I Learned From Him):

Things that make me love Checo (and the lessons I learned from him):

He carried around fish in his pockets because he wanted to walk them and be closer to his pets, and by extention killed them (lesson: love can kill you).

His siblings told him he was adopted (typical joke among mexican families) and he was convinced it was the truth, so he started asking his mother for his real family (telling her: 'lady, just tell me where my real family is) and then one day he packed up a small bag and went to look for his family (lesson: don't believe everything you are told).

His mother gave all three siblings a big ass-whooping for the whole occurrence (lesson: don't piss off a mexican mom).

He wanted to be a soccer player at first, and karting was just a hobby. The one invested in a career in driving was Toño. He tricked his brother in a race and manage to close up in a curve, taking them both out and pissing his brother off (lesson: dreams can change).

Also he was winning a race, and at the last lap, he thought it was over because he was distracted as he wanted to go to a soccer match and was in a hurry. Everyone kept telling him that he still had a lap left and when he managed to finish, he was second (lesson: pay attention to what you are doing).

Without any notion of how expensive long-distance calls were, he spent his nights calling to Germany, without knowing english and asking a friend to translate, until his mom got the phone bill and got another ass-whooping. He had to switch to exchange emails (lesson: keep trying no matter what).

Manage to convince the Slims to invest in his racing career (the origin of the sugad daddy jokes) and they sent him to Germany but he had to work to support himself until he could actually race (lesson: things will get worse before they get better).

He slept in a warehouse on flour sacks, and he then worked as a waiter and was allowed to sleep in the restaurant having as a roommate a chef who hated him because he was up all night (he was getting used to the change in time zone and got bored) and kept stealing his food (particularly pasta, which is why is his best dish to cook). He helped baking desserts and tried to learn german but never succeeded (lesson: some things are not meant to be, like learning german).

After failing with his first team, he seriously considered going back home and just forget about the racing dream. He was lonely, he felt he wasn't doing much and he barely spoke english and in his team they all spoke in german. This is when the Slims also doubted whether to continue sponsoring him, but then he asked for them to give him another chance and got another team (lesson: never give up).

This was just an excuse to use a few of my vintage Checo pictures, thank you for stopping by, please feel free to keep scrolling.

(or if you want me to keep going for the GP2 series and the start of F1, let me know!)