Cadillac turns first 2026 laps at Silverstone as Bottas–Pérez pairing gets rolling
Cadillac’s Formula 1 project finally breathed on-track air at Silverstone, with the new American entrant quietly shaking down its 2026 car behind closed doors on Friday.
It’s a milestone moment: the General Motors brand will be the first new team on the grid since Haas in 2016, and it’s wasting no time getting mileage as the 2026 rules reset looms. The initial run was kept deliberately low-profile, but it marks the first time a Cadillac-badged F1 car has turned a wheel in anger.
The team’s first driver duo, Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas — signed in August — give the project a hard edge from day one: a pair of wily operators with race wins, podiums and plenty of scar tissue from the sport’s sharpest elbows. Add Zhou Guanyu as reserve, and Cadillac has opted for experience and clean feedback over fireworks. For a brand that must learn fast, that’s a smart call.
Zhou was the one to break cover on the Silverstone run, appearing in a short clip on Cadillac’s social channels to confirm the shakedown. He sketched out the agenda in simple terms: systems checks, comms drills and creature comforts before performance ever enters the chat. As Zhou put it, a shakedown is about making sure the car runs, the gearbox and engine behave, and that the drivers are comfortable with the seat and wheel while engineers tick through setup basics. Box-ticking may not be glamorous, but this is the groundwork every serious program needs.
The hardware itself stays under wraps a little longer. Images and detailed footage from the day hadn’t surfaced at the time of writing, though Cadillac did reveal a test livery earlier in the week. The full race look is set for a high-profile premiere in an ad during the Super Bowl on February 8 — a very American way to say hello to the world.
Under the skin, Cadillac will lean on customer Ferrari power at the start of its F1 life while GM’s own power unit continues development. That’s a pragmatic bridge: it lets the team rack up laps and learning without waiting on a brand-new engine to be ready, and it buys GM time to hit the 2026 hybrid brief properly. Expect the team to be coy on timelines for its in-house PU — and rightly so.
This isn’t Cadillac’s first taste of F1 machinery. The outfit ran a private session at Imola last November with Pérez sampling a black-liveried 2023 Ferrari — a familiar path for fresh teams keen to sharpen procedures and communication before their own car is ready. But Silverstone represents the real beginning: a Cadillac-built chassis, its own systems, and the start of a very steep climb.
They’re not alone on the 2026 trail. Audi was first to show its hand with an early shakedown in Barcelona last week, and the development race is already moving in lockstep between the new boys and the established giants. Early laps don’t win points, but they do uncover gremlins before launch-spec cars hit public tests — and those days saved can pay off through a long first season.
As for the drivers, Bottas and Pérez bring different strengths that should blend well in a start-up phase. Bottas is methodical and mechanically sympathetic; Pérez has a knack for improvisation and race management. Neither needs to prove they can handle pressure. Together, they give Cadillac a high floor while the ceiling gets built.
So, what’s next? More of the same, in truth. Correlation runs. Reliability checks. Procedures, pit stops, starts. Then comes the show: liveries, launches, and the first time the 2026 cars run in anger in public. For Cadillac, the message from Silverstone is simple enough — the car runs, the project is real, and a very American entry is officially on track.
