Steady hands or missed chance? Pérez and Bottas look set to drive for Cadillac’s F1 team

Cadillac is not entering F1 to be a novelty.

The project has been pitched as a serious long-term investment, but its first season will be less about trophies and more about credibility: finishing races, scoring occasional points, and proving it can operate at the highest level.

That puts enormous weight on the choice of drivers, and picking Pérez and Bottas shows Cadillac wasn’t willing to take big risks like picking someone with no F1 experience like Colton Herta.

Pérez and Bottas offer a race-winning resume, maturity, and experience in working in the high-pressure environment that is a top F1 team. But both also carry baggage.

Pérez – A marketable choice

The Mexican arrives at Cadillac after a year spent completely disconnected from F1, having lost his Red Bull drive at the end of a 2024 in which he finished eighth in the standings, 258 points behind team-mate and champion Max Verstappen.

Both in 2022 and 2023, Pérez was a strong asset for Red Bull, delivering valuable points and even winning races. But his 2024 season was marred by inconsistency and a lack of pace, often unable to get near Verstappen.

Perez’s reputation has been somewhat helped by the complete failure of Red Bull’s plan to replace him, first with Liam Lawson and later with Yuki Tsunoda, both men struggling even more to get close to Verstappen.

Pérez’s strengths as a driver were quite clear when he was capable of delivering: He had racecraft few could match, often excelling in opportunistic scenarios and managing tyres with surgical precision.

For a new team still learning the ropes of a race weekend, such skills could be invaluable.

Off-track, his value is even greater: as Mexico’s most successful F1 driver, he brings the sponsorship muscle and fan engagement of an entire region.

For Cadillac, a brand looking to position itself globally while maintaining a North American identity, Pérez ticks almost every commercial box.

Cadillac’s situation as a new team without huge pressure to get results straight away will likely help Pérez, who will also need time to re-adapt.

But after a rough 2024 and a year away from F1, there will be questions about whether he remains sharp enough to lead a new team forward, or whether his Red Bull years proved his ceiling has already been reached.

For Cadillac, the risk is clear: in Pérez, the team would gain a marketing magnet and a very experienced driver, but perhaps not a true team leader or someone whose speed is in no doubt after a year away from competition.

Bottas – An engineer’s favourite

Although he is also spending the 2025 season on the sidelines, Bottas’s case is quite different to Pérez’s. For one, the Finn has been travelling to races with Mercedes as its reserve driver, and has even driven an F1 car from a previous season with McLaren.

Like Pérez, Bottas had a 2024 season to forget but, unlike the Mexican, he wasn’t dominated by his team-mate. He just had the worst car on the grid and then Sauber (shortly to become Audi) decided to go in another direction with its line-up.

Bottas has carved out a career defined by consistency and technical feedback.

During his stint at Mercedes, Bottas often played an important role in Mercedes’s dominance before losing his drive and ending up at Alfa Romeo/Sauber, where he mostly spent his time at the back of the midfield.

As Cadillac embarks on its first Formula 1 project, Bottas’s experience in team-building and car development will be instrumental. His methodical approach makes him a driver well-suited to collaborate closely with engineers, a key element for a team taking its first steps.

At 35 (also Pérez’s age), Bottas is arguably past the typical developmental peak age for F1 drivers, but Cadillac has declared that it will be hiring with an eye on experience and will not see that as a problem, at least initially.

A conservative choice

Choosing Pérez and Bottas would undoubtedly be a conservative decision by Cadillac. But it’s unsurprising that a new team which expects to struggle at the back of the field would opt for what it considers a safe line-up, as underwhelming as the choice might be.

The decision, however, doesn’t come without risks.

Cadillac looks set to choose two drivers whose F1 careers appeared to be almost over not that long ago,  who will have spent a year in the sidelines ahead of a massive regulations change.

As Bottas and Pérez are known quantities, they will eliminate one element of uncertainty in the very complex process that is creating a new F1 team from scratch, one that is undoubtedly causing plenty of headaches for the American manufacturer.

Is that a safe approach? No doubt. Is it also the most boring one? Absolutely.