Cadillac’s first F1 driver line-up is official, and its announcement has revealed a lot more than just confirmation that Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas will race for F1’s newest team in 2026.
This is what we’ve learned speaking to the Cadillac team’s owners, its team principal, and Perez and Bottas themselves.
Perez doubts needed resolving
Both Perez and Bottas will rejoin the F1 grid after a year away, but their circumstances haven’t been the same.
While Bottas stayed engaged in the paddock by taking on a Mercedes test and reserve driver role, Perez opted to spend time at home after a bruising final year with Red Bull ended with him being paid off to leave the team two years before the end of his contract.
Cadillac was quickly satisfied with its review of Bottas’s final year with Sauber in 2024 to believe he still had the ability and desire to be an asset.
Perez was also immediately on Cadillac’s longlist of driver options but the nature of his Red Bull slump and eventual exit meant Cadillac’s decision makers had some “questions and scepticism” to resolve, according to Cadillac F1 CEO Dan Towriss.
He said there was also “a lot of conversation” internally around Perez being out for a full year. So Cadillac went as far as seeking out Red Bull personnel to understand what Perez went through, as well as meeting with Perez and discussing his situation with him at length.
And Towriss said they “couldn’t have been more pleased” with what they found and said Perez “outperformed” expectations when they met him face-to-face so “passed our tests with flying colours”.
Plus, there’s the reality of what’s happened to his successors. Perez’s replacement Liam Lawson fared even worse and was dropped after just two races, and since then, Yuki Tsunoda has not exactly shone.
This has helped crystallise the view it was more of a Red Bull problem than a Perez one.
Meanwhile Perez insists is just looking forward to enjoying being in F1 again and has nothing to prove after Red Bull. As he pointed out his successors have managed just seven points between them, which basically means ‘they’ve proved my point for me’.
Bottas’ Mercedes release is ongoing
While Towriss admitted Cadillac needed to work out Perez’s desire to be back in F1 and belief in its project, Bottas was a much easier target given he was at the track every weekend.
However, that came with its own complication: Bottas has a lot of Mercedes duties. He’s not there just to make light-hearted social media videos. Mercedes mapped out a testing schedule based on Bottas’s availability, and he is their main reserve driver.
Moving on from that seems to still be unresolved. Towriss says they are “still working through some of the details there” and it isn’t decided “when his day job will switch from Mercedes to Cadillac”.
It’s unlikely to meet much resistance, given Bottas has already been in front of the media to discuss his Cadillac move. And this is all very amicable.
Cadillac’s press release featured Bottas and Towriss thanking Mercedes for their support, although amusingly didn’t specify what that support was or even mention that Bottas was a Mercedes driver!
Plus, team principal Graeme Lowdon went out of his way to add a second answer to a different to thank Mercedes and Toto Wolff again in another press conference, saying they’ve been “very helpful in our discussion with Valtteri and organising a good hand over at the right time”
But all signs point to Bottas completing the season as Mercedes’ reserve driver, which will limit how much he can do for Cadillac even if it doesn’t block his involvement entirely.
Track testing in an old Ferrari
While Bottas’s full-on involvement is still a matter of when, Perez is free to start work immediately.
That means planning a factory visit, piling into simulator running, and even doing some on-track running in an old car later in the year.
While there are no old Cadillacs to conduct private testing with, sourcing a car at least two years old from a rival is permitted.
Perez hinted at a plan to test with an F1 car this year, and when we asked Lowdon, he confirmed they will introduce real-car testing this year working with another team as Cadillac doesn’t have its own.
The team is expected to utilise its partnership with engine supplier Ferrari to run a 2022 or 2023 car.
Cadillac is already simulating full grand prix weekends, but this will complement its data-gathering mission and help the team get to know each other and get up to speed in the real world.
There will also be other benefits to running in the real world even if it is with someone else’s car, like getting Perez back up to speed after his year out.
What’s convinced the drivers
As you would expect at a new announcement, there is no disputing the interest and enthusiasm both Bottas and Perez have for the project.
However, when we heard from them, neither was pretending that this is going to be a return to the kind of success they were able to enjoy at Mercedes and Red Bull respectively.
They’ll obviously be well compensated for committing to this project, and there’s the prospect of a very long-term relationship with major American brands plus a Le Mans sports programme to potentially be part of further down the road.
But both Bottas and Perez find the idea of helping build a team from the ground up very appealing. And there is still a sincere belief that they have something to offer, and a motivation to be on the grid, because neither left F1 on their own terms last year.
They have been in different circumstances. Perez has needed some time to process his Red Bull exit and take a break from F1, to rediscover his enjoyment in racing.
Meanwhile Bottas took his Mercedes role specifically with the idea of staying relevant and being in a position to get this Cadillac deal done. He knows it will be a “mountain” of work but that’s why he wants to be part of it and, in his words, “get my hands dirty with the team”.
Both are very aware that Cadillac will be in a very difficult position next year, and Bottas said more than once that Lowdon had made it very clear in their conversations it would be a tough start.
But they are focusing more on what progress is possible and the part they can play in realising the project’s potential.
American drivers not in the mix
The prospect of an American driver racing for the team has never seemed particularly great, or of serious consideration in the short-term.
There were several potential options if Cadillac wanted an American: co-owner TWG has the Andretti IndyCar team in its portfolio, giving it easy access to race winners Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood. And Aston Martin’s junior Jak Crawford, who is fighting for the Formula 2 title, was an option from the conventional F1 single-seater ladder.
Towriss said one of Cadillac’s goals is to make sure there’s a pathway for more Americans to get into F1, and it will be working on that.
But Cadillac’s priority of F1 experience, not to mention Herta’s ongoing superlicence ineligibility, meant American drivers were never realistic contenders for its inaugural line-up.
The ‘unanimous’ priority
With all that Cadillac is doing for its first F1 season, and the scale of the challenge ahead, it was always going to sign at least one experienced driver to help get the team off the ground.
Then there was a large pool of young drivers around including ex-F1 drivers Zhou Guanyu, Mick Schumacher, Jack Doohan and potential rookies like Felipe Drugovich and Paul Aron.
But it quickly became “unanimous” among stakeholders to maximise experience and have two proven F1 drivers in both seats, with some of the others like Schumacher potentially just taking on a reserve or simulator driver role.
Towriss said that while it was “tough” decision to exclude younger drivers, “experience in F1 carried the day” in the decision-making process.
And in all the communication so far there has been a very heavy emphasis on the influence Perez and Bottas will have on team and car development.
Towriss cited “their experience, leadership and technical acumen” as being assets that the team really needs, while General Motors boss Mark Reuss went heavy on the development aspect.
Reuss even went as far as claiming that the feedback of the drivers into the car development will be a “landmark in the history books here for Cadillac”.
Contrasting narratives
There are clearly two strands to the Cadillac narrative emerging as the various parts of the team work out what they want to prioritise.
A GM-owned team that will be a full works entry and has gone through a hell of a lot to get on the grid cannot be set up with anything other than high expectations. So, Cadillac’s messaging is unsurprisingly quite grand and with a bit of American bombast in places.
Towriss has called the driver news “more than just a lineup announcement, it’s the beginning of a bold new chapter in American motorsport”. Reuss says “we’re building the foundation for American motorsports that will be an extraordinary legacy for Cadillac, GM and the sport”.
But none of that will happen any time soon. Next year, Cadillac will probably be at the back of the grid.
It might be last by some margin but even if it’s not that bad, nobody realistic within the team is expecting a repeat of F1’s last newest team Haas scoring points on its debut.
So, for all the emerging hyperbole, it’s being kept very vague because a timeline would be foolish.
And the longer-term narrative that this project will be great and successful at some point is being balanced out by Lowdon, who knows first-hand how difficult F1 is.
Lowdon was CEO of the Virgin/Marussia/Manor F1 team that entered F1 in 2010 until he left at the end of 2015 and is stressing from experience that the short-term will be very tough - a sentiment now echoed by Cadillac’s new drivers too.
Engine 'ahead of schedule'
There is a tonne of work to get done in time for the start of 2026 - so much that the team won’t show off its car until after it runs in the January private test.
Maybe that’ll be par for the course with all teams but it could also be taken as Cadillac needing every possible day it can get to run on track for the first time. Towriss said that it won’t be until February next year that Cadillac’s in any position to reveal its “final product” for 2026.
What sounds more encouraging is the longer-term engine project, with a works engine planned for 2029.
Reuss said that is on track and suggested the engines running on the test bench are already starting to be bigger, more complete units.
Towriss went even further and was quite bullish about the bigger picture health of the project. He claimed the engine development, led by Russ O’Blenes, is “actually ahead of schedule more than what people realise”.
It’s rare for any manufacturer to be pleased with its engine progress. Best case scenario, GM’s work genuinely is going really well - but worst case scenario it is either underestimating exactly how much it needs to do or has undershot with its initial targets.
Whatever the result, Towriss is talking up how well this vast enterprise has come together in fairly quick order, and says he is “very, very pleased with the progress and the trajectory”.
