The nascent Cadillac Formula 1 team has signed out-of-work drivers Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez to fill its driver roster for its debut 2026 campaign.
Bottas and Pérez were both sacked from their drives at the end of last season. While Bottas has reunited with Mercedes as a reserve this year, Pérez has yet to set foot in a Formula 1 paddock.
It’s a reunion of sorts. Bottas and Pérez were rivals in 2021, when their Mercedes and Red Bull Racing teams were locked in a tense battle for both titles.
Bottas helped Mercedes to its eighth consecutive constructors championship. Pérez’s stern defence ahead of Lewis Hamilton in that year’s controversial Abu Dhabi decider played a critical role in keeping Max Verstappen within the Briton’s pit stop window at the safety car, which ultimately put him in a position to capitalise on the mishandling of the final laps.
Those days are long behind them, however.
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Bottas had already been told he would be axed from the team before that infamous conclusion, and he followed up by spending three mostly miserable years at Sauber as it endured an interminable slide down the pecking order.
In his final year with the team, in 2024, he scored no points, comfortably his worst campaign in Formula 1, thanks to his woeful machinery, and he was replaced by Gabriel Bortoleto for 2025.
Pérez fared better, though his fall was greater.
He kicked on in 2022 with 11 podiums, including a pair of wins, but finished third in the championship with a car that saw teammate Verstappen romp to his second title with four races to spare.
Things got worse in 2023. Though he finished a career-best second, he stood on the podium just nine times despite driving the most dominant car in Formula 1 history. His tail-off at the end of the year was particularly alarming, with only two podium appearances after the midseason break.
A fast start in 2024 proved illusory, with the Mexican slumping to a miserable eighth in the championship after failing to mount the podium after the first five rounds. While Verstappen won another title, Pérez’s anaemic points score meant Red Bull Racing lost the constructors championship, and he was sacked at the end of the year.
On paper, then, this line-up hardly sounds like the “bold signal of intent” team principal Graeme Lowdon described it as.
But together they form the best possible line-up for Cadillac’s first F1 campaign.
WHY THEM?
Cadillac’s rhetoric over its impending F1 debut has tempered significantly compared to the brash confidence of Michael Andretti in the early days of the team’s bid.
Expectations are being played down as heavily as possible in anticipation of the steep climb to competitiveness.
On the one hand, entering the sport aligned with new regulations makes sense, with no money wasted on a car that might have raced for just one season.
On the other, it means this car will really be built from scratch by a group of people that have never worked together in this environment before. There’s no opportunity to see what other teams have done and learn from them.
Experience, therefore, is crucial.
Experience is what Bottas and Pérez have in spades.
Between them they’ve started 527 grands prix. They’ve won 16 grands prix, taken 23 pole positions and claimed 106 podium trophies.
More important, however, is where that experience comes from.
Both drivers have raced for the very best teams in modern Formula 1.
A regular podium-getter at Williams before joining Mercedes in 2017, Bottas was integral to the German marque’s dominance over his five-year shift.
By then Mercedes was established at the front of the field and a highly efficient winning unit, dispatching periodic challenges from Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel and claiming the constructors championship against Red Bull Racing in 2021.
His qualifying speed was particularly noteworthy — against Hamilton, the most prolific pole-getter of all time, he took 20 poles to the Briton’s 42.
The Finn was replaced only because Mercedes had invested heavily in home-grown junior George Russell, who is clearly among the best of his generation.
Pérez, meanwhile, had four years with Red Bull Racing, during which time Milton Keynes won the teams title twice, including with the ultra-dominant 2023 car that set new records for success.
But his prior midfield experience is also valuable. Pérez spearheaded the Force India team — now Aston Martin — for seven years before joining Red Bull Racing, during which time he earnt a reputation for formidable racecraft, squeezing points and podiums out of machinery barely worthy of them.
He was also a race winner before arriving at Red Bull Racing, having claimed a famous maiden victory in the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix.
That skill translated at Red Bull Racing, where he earnt the moniker ‘Mexican Minister for Defence’ for his wily driving.
While he petered out massively in his final year at Milton Keynes, the struggles of Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda in his seat — plus revelations of chaos at the team, including Christian Horner’s shock dismissal earlier this year — have served to recontextualise his own difficulties.
The combination of championship-winning knowledge and proven speed and racecraft is rare to find on the driver market, never mind across two drivers, making Pérez an Bottas obvious picks.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE YOUNG GUNS — and the Americans?
Cadillac sounded out several drivers before settling on Bottas and Pérez. Several were young guns.
Zhou Guanyu, the Ferrari reserve and former Sauber driver, was regularly connected to one of the seats. Aston Martin reserve Felipe Drugovich was also said to be in the mix, as were Mick Schumacher and Alpine reserve Paul Aron.
Sauber is making a cogent argument for a combination of experience and youth this season. Nico Hülkenberg has become a regular scorer as the car has improved, but he’s being pushed hard by Bortoleto, who holds a small qualifying advantage over his older teammate.
But Sauber is in a significantly different position to Cadillac.
Sauber has more than three decades of competition under its belt. Even if it was in the doldrums last year, it had the resources and facilities to recover.
Cadillac won’t even have a full complement of staff ready for next season. It doesn’t even have a car yet.
While there’s a logic to pairing an experienced figure with a hungry young gun, Cadillac needs to know the data its deriving from its drivers is consistent and dependable.
Pérez and Bottas are deeply known quantities who in many respects have complementary abilities. History suggests Bottas will get the most from the car over a single lap, giving the team development direction, while Pérez will wriggle his way into Cadillac’s best finishing positions.
Having that dependability will be especially important if Cadillac’s worst fears are realised and it debuts with a woefully uncompetitive car next year.
If the team is languishing way off the back of the pack, it’ll be experience, not hungry youth, that will accelerate the closing of the gap.
Experience, not youth, is more likely to capitalise on any rare opportunities to score that might come the team’s way.
And experience, not youth, is likely to have the patience to see the project through its early phase without feeling like years are being squandered. Bottas and Pérez, after all, know that second chances are rare and that they’re lucky to get a crack at all.
That argument is particularly pertinent in the context of the team’s original plan to field an American rising star in one of its seats.
Other than Jak Crawford, who’s currently second in the Formula 2 championship — albeit in his third campaign — there are no American juniors knocking on the door to Formula 1.
And if Crawford — and even other young drivers with some experience under their belts — risked being a drag on the team’s development, inducting an IndyCar star to Formula 1 was always going to be out of the question.
The leap between categories is simply too big for an establishing team like Cadillac to handle.
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BUT CADILLAC WASN’T THEIR ONLY OPTION
While Bottas and Pérez’s signatures say much about Cadillac’s intent and outlook, where they chose not to sign is also telling.
Alpine has been heavily rumoured to have opened talks with both drivers this year about a seat in 2026 or earlier as the team wavered on its decision to drop Franco Colapinto into Jack Doohan’s seat after six rounds.
With neither Colapinto nor Doohan having scored so far this year — they’re the only drivers without points — Alpine finds itself anchored to the bottom of the championship.
Pérez was speculated to have been sounded out first, particularly given he comes with sponsorship backing that might replace the money Colapinto is reportedly attracting to the team.
More recently, however, Bottas became a significant target, with Alpine management talking to Mercedes boss Toto Wolff about the possibility of the Finn being released to drive later this season.
But neither Pérez nor Bottas has taken up the offer, choosing instead to race for a team that could be several seconds off the back of the pack next season.
It reflects poorly on Alpine.
There are some headline reasons why you’d pick the nascent Cadillac over the established Alpine.
The French brand is giving up its status as a works team to take Mercedes customer engines from next year, shuttering Renault’s highly decorated engine division in the process in a cost-cutting move.
Cadillac will start life with Ferrari power but will transition to its own in-house General Motors engine by the end of the decade. In other words, it’s moving in the opposite direction — in the direction conventional wisdom suggests is essential for success in Formula 1.
Cadillac future in the sport is also clear. The team is still ramping up in terms of recruitment and facilities, and its first original power unit is still years away. It’s in Formula 1 to stay for at least as long as Pérez and Bottas will continue racing.
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Alpine, however, is dogged by rumours that it will be sold by parent company Renault, having already been partially carved up for private equity stake in 2023.
Flavio Briatore’s position at the helm has also done little to instil confidence given the upheaval that’s taken place on his watch. There’s also uncertainty about the 75-year-old’s place at the team given he was installed as executive adviser to CEO Luca de Meo, who suddenly resigned earlier this year.
All this is happening while Alpine’s midfield rivals are taking steps forwards.
Haas is tying up with Toyota in a deal that will accelerate the sport’s other American-owned team’s development.
Sauber will become the Audi works team next season.
Aston Martin has cut the ribbon on a state-of-the-art headquarters and snared legendary designer Adrian Newey to lead the team.
Williams is on the up. Racing Bulls is tightening ties with the senior Red Bull Racing team.
Alpine, meanwhile, is counting the cost of instability, uncertainty and stagnation in its failed driver market bid.
It leaves it with few options in 2026.
Retaining Colapinto is the most likely. The Argentine has shown some signs of improvement — he is a rookie, after all — and if he can more consistently match Pierre Gasly, especially on the team’s good days, it will be enough to continue next season.
But if not, the team might find itself hoping Red Bull Racing decides to ditch Yuki Tsunoda. The Japanese ace has more than 100 starts under his belt and had developed a rapid reputation at Racing Bulls that shouldn’t soon be forgotten.
Reuniting him with former teammate Gasly, with whom he gets along with very well, would also be a boon to the struggling team.
But not unlike its lunge for Bottas and Pérez, that option too is out of Alpine’s hands.