Cadillac locks in race engineers for Perez and Bottas as 2026 prep shifts up a gear
Cadillac has filled the most important seats not covered in carbon fiber. The new-for-2026 outfit has appointed Carlo Pasetti as Sergio Perez’s race engineer and John Howard as Valtteri Bottas’s on-the-wall voice, completing two crucial pairings before the brand’s first Formula 1 season.
Pasetti arrives from Aston Martin, where he served as a performance engineer, and will inherit the high-wire act that is managing Perez’s race-day instincts and tire wizardry. Howard, meanwhile, brings a decade and a half of Enstone know-how to Bottas’s side after stints with the team through its Renault and Alpine eras, including time as Pierre Gasly’s race engineer.
For a start-up hunting stability, this is exactly the sort of sensible noise you want in the garage. In a regulation reset year, with Ferrari customer engines behind the drivers from 2026, Cadillac has opted for engineers steeped in contemporary racecraft and operational discipline rather than headline names.
Howard’s CV reads like a steady climb through the Enstone ranks. He joined the team in 2010, rose to senior performance engineer late in 2022, and then took over race engineering duties for Gasly. His step up coincided with Karel Loos moving into the head of trackside engineering role, and Howard later departed in April before linking up with Cadillac over the summer. If you’ve listened to his radio over the years, you’ll know he’s unflappable — a good match for Bottas’s measured feedback loop.
Pasetti, on the other hand, slots into Perez’s camp with the task of extracting lap-time without throwing away Sunday. Perez heads into 2026 as the most successful Mexican driver in F1 history with 11 grand prix victories, and his best days have always arrived when the car gives him a platform to manage deg and improvise in traffic. Pasetti’s background suggests that’s exactly the brief.
This all comes as Cadillac builds momentum toward its debut. After its entry was approved earlier this year, the team moved quickly to lock in its driver lineup of Bottas and Perez — both returning to full-time competition after sitting out the 2025 campaign. Perez turned the first laps for the program in November at Imola, sampling a black-liveried, 2023-spec Ferrari as part of early systems work. Sources at the time indicated the quickest lap was in the 1:16s, quicker than the 1:17.2 figure doing the rounds on social media. The intent was clear: get reps, gather data, and start speaking the same language.
Bottas, who completed a seat fit after the Abu Dhabi finale following his stint as a Mercedes reserve, is next in line to rack up miles as the operation scales up. The Finn’s 10 wins from his Mercedes years remain a tidy reminder of his baseline speed and race execution when given a car he trusts.
There’s also a marketing flourish you don’t often see from a brand-new F1 entry: Cadillac will unveil its 2026 livery during the Super Bowl on February 8. It’s a statement of reach — and, frankly, confidence — from a team that hasn’t turned a competitive lap yet but clearly understands how to introduce itself to the mainstream. F1 has long since become appointment viewing in the U.S.; Cadillac’s betting big that the cross-over can start before the car hits the grid.
What’s left on the to-do list? Plenty. Integrating Ferrari’s power unit supply with Cadillac’s chassis program, refining operating procedures with a fresh trackside group, and threading two veterans into a coherent development cycle are all winter jobs. But naming Pasetti and Howard now gives the drivers their most important working relationship — the voice in the ear, the filter, the reality check — months before the stopwatch starts judging.
On paper, it’s pragmatic and quietly ambitious. Perez gets a detail-driven partner to help him rediscover his Sunday swagger. Bottas reunites with a calm communicator who’s been through multiple technical eras and team identities. For a newcomer, Cadillac’s building a team that looks more experienced than its entry form suggests.
