Why Cadillac chose Bottas and Pérez for 2026 F1 race seats

Wednesday - 27/08/2025 09:03

There won't be an American behind the wheel of Cadillac's F1 car, but in Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas, there's plenty of race-winning experience.

Nate SaundersAug 26, 2025, 06:50 PM
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Cadillac's new Formula 1 team will join the grid in 2026 with a lineup familiar to many fans: Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas.

It's a tried-and-tested pairing and, until Tuesday's announcement, had been the biggest missing piece of the new team's identity. Both have joined on multiyear contracts, offering the new team immediate stability in what can be the most volatile part of the F1 team-building jigsaw puzzle.

While a popular duo, U.S. race fans might feel a tinge of disappointment at the announcement, with Cadillac previously hinting at one of the two seats being filled by an American. So why did they opt not to do so? How did they settle on Pérez and Bottas? And what should a fair level of expectation be for the two men and their new team in 2026?

Why these two?

This decision ultimately boiled down to logic that will be familiar to anyone who's participated in a fantasy draft: selecting the best available talents. Cadillac's new team will face a steep learning curve, joining the grid at the beginning of a brand-new set of aerodynamic and engine regulations. Experience will be key for the team and help ensure it hits the ground running.

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This was evidenced by the wording of Tuesday's announcement. The duo, Cadillac said, bring "an unmatched blend of experience, leadership and technical acumen." Between them, they have 527 grand prix starts, 23 pole positions, 16 race wins (and three sprint victories for good measure). The only other race winner who seemed like a candidate was Daniel Ricciardo (eight victories), but he ruled himself out of contention early on, telling people privately he considers his racing career to be finished. Sources have told ESPN that Cadillac never formally approached Ricciardo, despite his popularity in the States, to see if he might change his mind.

Both drivers also have experience with various teams, as well as an insight into F1's two most recent dynasties: Mercedes (Bottas) and Red Bull (Pérez). While both were teammates of Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, respectively, as they won multiple world championships, both know what the gold standard is on and off the track. While there are many brilliant minds in Formula 1, the pool of drivers and technicians with that kind of insight is actually smaller than most would think. That experience will be invaluable as Cadillac grows into its new role.

Team boss Graeme Lowdon did cast the net far and wide, talking to as many drivers as he could. Lowdon manages Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu, who was Bottas' teammate at Sauber between 2022 and 2024, meaning his name seemed like a strong candidate, while Mick Schumacher was among the other names linked to the seat in the media in recent months. Sources close to the decision-making process have told ESPN that while there were a lot of conversations elsewhere, Cadillac was set on Pérez and Bottas from an early stage.

Bottas was keen to return immediately, having been pushed aside at Sauber as it approaches its exciting new dawn with Audi. Cadillac represents a good opportunity to return to an exciting new F1 project with lofty ambitions -- and, this time, to be a central part of it. The Finn teased his interest earlier in the year in a social media video of him approaching a parked Cadillac Escalade and commenting that it was a "nice seat."

Pérez was less convinced early on. Hurt by his unceremonious departure from Red Bull at the end of last year, the Mexican driver was not initially certain he wanted to return to F1. For the first time in his adult life, the father of four was able to get off the hamster wheel of modern day motor racing and step away from the grid -- sources said he found the time away from the sport refreshing. Last week, Pérez posted a carousel of photographs to his Instagram with a caption in Spanish that read, "I didn't know summers were that long."

Pérez's year has included a safari in Africa and vacations to Bermuda, Madrid, Punta Mita, Puerto Vallarta, Vail and even Disneyland. He also became a regular fixture at football games of his favorite club, América, which included watching matches in Las Vegas and Houston.

After a year out of the sport, both Valtteri Bottas, left, and Sergio Pérez will return to F1 in 2026 with Cadillac. Cadillac

During all of it, though, sources say Pérez was monitoring F1 very closely. First, he was mindful of the future of his old teammate, Verstappen, and what impact that would have on his own options. Had Verstappen triggered the widely reported exit clause in his contract and forced a 2026 move to Mercedes, it could have opened up all kinds of opportunities as the dominoes fell to accommodate the Dutchman's move. Ultimately, that did not happen and the "silly season" -- the nickname given to F1's yearly driver market -- was not so silly after all.

As with Bottas, Pérez had only one other serious option beyond Cadillac: Alpine. Pierre Gasly is signed with the team for 2026, but Franco Colapinto is not. Sources have said Alpine approached both drivers, and some reports earlier this summer went as far as to suggest that Bottas might replace the struggling Argentine after the current summer break.

Ultimately both Bottas and Pérez had the same concern when it came to Alpine's interest. While the floundering team might well improve next year as it moves to Mercedes engines, its decision making on drivers has been muddled and unclear. Sources have told ESPN the team could not guarantee either driver a speedy decision, simply down to how difficult it would be to quickly sever ties with Colapinto and the sponsors he's brought to the team, meaning both risked the scenario of waiting on Alpine and missing out on Cadillac altogether, with no guarantee there was even a seat at Alpine. To highlight that uncertainty, one source with knowledge of Alpine's thinking on the matter has told ESPN that there's a decent chance Colapinto stays in the seat beyond this season.

Ultimately, Cadillac offered both drivers something tangible, immediate and for more than a single season. It is understood that at least two other teams with their lineups locked down for next season told Pérez that he would be in contention for something from 2027 onward, but the risk of taking another year out was too great and, as with Alpine, was too vague to pin his hopes to. Ultimately, the pull of a multiyear deal and the opportunity to get in with a new team on the ground floor proved to be too strong to ignore.

What can be expected of Pérez and Bottas?

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Cadillac's new driver pairing does not just come equipped with experience -- both have a point to prove.

Pérez was hurt by the way Red Bull parted company with him last year, and multiple sources with knowledge of the situation have said his once-positive relationship with former team principal Christian Horner soured during that process. Pérez's reputation took a battering in the last 18 months of his time with the former world champions as his form plummeted, a situation made more stark by Verstappen's incredible results in the sister car. However, Verstappen was one of the first to suggest that the issue was not Pérez, but the car Red Bull had built. The fact that Pérez's successors Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda have done even worse as Verstappen's teammate has helped how that situation is viewed now. More and more, the feeling in the paddock has grown that Red Bull did not help Pérez as much as it might have done.

He returns to Cadillac looking to rekindle some of his old form. When he joined Red Bull in 2021, he was considered one of the underutilized talents on the grid, with a breakthrough win at the penultimate round in 2020 catapulting him ahead of Nico Hülkenberg in contention to replace Alex Albon. He played a memorable role in Verstappen's 2021 season, earning himself the nickname "Mexico's Minister of Defense" for some of his defending against Hamilton, including at the infamous Abu Dhabi Grand Prix title showdown.

Bottas left Mercedes at the end of that race and spent three forgettable seasons with Sauber (called Alfa Romeo for the first two years he was there). Although Sauber has been one of the feel-good stories of the current season, Bottas was there when its results were ugly. With Cadillac, he's been given a second chance at a run in Formula 1 which might have seemed unlikely when he first got booted by Sauber.

Why no Americans?

There has always been a clamor for American teams to look at American talents, but the driver pool is just not big enough, especially in an era of limited in-season testing. When he was leading the project that eventually became Cadillac, Michael Andretti stated categorically he wanted to enter with an American driver in one of the two seats, but as he was shuffled out of control and as General Motors upped its own involvement and commitment, that was downgraded from a promise to a desired aim.

The same question used to regularly get put to former Haas team boss Guenther Steiner about that American outfit's driver decisions and quickly became a running joke in media sessions around driver market time. Haas was the last team to join Formula 1, doing so in 2016, and coincidentally it also joined the grid with a Mexican driver (Esteban Gutiérrez) and a European (Romain Grosjean) at the helm.

Why didn't Cadillac go for an American driver?

Nate Saunders and Laurence Edmondson look at the reasons behind why Cadillac picked Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas and not an American driver for their F1 team.

While a nice idea on paper, Andretti's pledge was quite unrealistic given the realities of both modern Formula 1 and Cadillac's situation. Getting an American driver in the car might have been less complicated in the era of unlimited testing, with teams able to pay good money for prospective talents to accumulate thousands of miles outside official test events. Those days do not exist now. Even with 12 days of preseason testing next season so teams can properly evaluate the cars built under a brand-new set of rules, it presents an added complication when deciding whether to choose a driver without any F1 experience of any kind.

The learning curve is steep, but the European racing system is largely geared around elevation to Formula 1. For decades it has been the case that young American karting prospects have faced an early choice: stay in the States and aim for open-wheel racing there, or make the expensive move to Europe's junior categories to try and make it to Formula 1. The reason most new recruits to Formula 1 come from the Formula 2/Formula 3 feeder system is that those championships race on the same circuits, with the same Pirelli tires and, quite often, with links to the F1 teams themselves. Logan Sargeant, who was dropped by Williams last year, moved to Europe at a young age for that reason. American youngster Jak Crawford, currently second in Formula 2, did similar to achieve the same goal. Sources have told ESPN that Crawford is still hopeful of landing a Cadillac role of some kind, such as a test deal or a development contract.

IndyCar's Colton Herta was often the name linked with America's new F1 team, but even he distanced himself from the opportunity earlier this year -- it seems unlikely he will finish the year with the championship finish he needed for the Super License points anyway. Beyond Herta, there aren't many obvious candidates. Multiple IndyCar champion and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden, at the age of 34, seems to have missed the window to make the switch over to F1.

Some may say there is still a cynicism in Formula 1 toward IndyCar and American racing more generally, and that might be true. Certainly many in the paddock scoffed at the notion of F1 welcoming an 11th team when it was still packaged as Andretti, a name that has enjoyed considerable success as a race team in the U.S. Formula 1 was much happier to accept the bid once General Motors had stepped up its own involvement and pledged to be a fully fledged works outfit (building both car and engine) by the end of the decade -- and once Andretti had been moved aside.

Michael's father, Mario Andretti, remains America's last F1 race winner and world champion, ticking both off in 1978. Mario Andretti is on Cadillac F1's board of directors. Finding an American driver down the line will likely be a longer-term goal of the incoming outfit.