Valtteri Bottas has seen most things in a long Formula 1 career, but even he didn’t have “missing Cadillac” on his Miami weekend bingo card.
The Cadillac F1 driver revealed that a team-provided Escalade rental was stolen from the driveway of his accommodation while he was in Florida for the 2026 Miami Grand Prix — and that the car disappeared with something far more sensitive than luggage inside it: his paddock pass.
Bottas told the story on the *What’s next?* podcast he hosts with Paul Ripke, framing it as a Fort Lauderdale decision that was meant to make Miami easier, not more complicated. He’s previously stayed closer to the circuit in Miami and South Beach, but said he now prefers Fort Lauderdale because it’s “more chill” and, in his words, a “nice area” with low crime.
That calm lasted right up until Saturday morning.
After returning on Friday, Bottas said he parked the Escalade in the Airbnb driveway, ate, and went to bed early. The keys were inside the house and the car was locked. Nothing about the routine sounded remotely out of the ordinary — until his assistant, Paul Harris, called him while he was showering.
Bottas initially didn’t understand why he was even getting a phone call, given Harris was staying in the same Airbnb.
“He was like, ‘Oh, I was asking where did you go?’” Bottas explained. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, the car is gone.’”
The disbelief is the most relatable part of the whole thing. Bottas said he walked outside, opened the door, saw the keys still sitting on the table — and the Escalade simply wasn’t there.
With a grand prix day schedule already tight before anyone has even mislaid a credential, the immediate problem was basic logistics: getting to the track. Bottas said another Escalade was dispatched to get him in, but as soon as he settled into the replacement ride the real headache hit him.
His paddock pass was in the stolen vehicle.
In modern F1, the pass isn’t just a laminated access card; it’s the one thing you don’t want floating around outside the bubble, especially on a weekend when the paddock is already operating at full tilt with sponsors, VIP programmes and elevated security. Bottas said he found a workaround to gain access, but the missing pass escalated the response quickly.
“FBI got involved,” he said. “Full investigation.”
The inevitable paddock joke followed: for one day only, someone could have been Valtteri Bottas — at least in theory. Bottas leaned into it, quipping the thief had “all the opportunities for that day”, from VIP parking to walking into the team area.
In practice, it didn’t play out like some elaborate attempt to infiltrate the Miami paddock. Bottas said the car was found dumped the next day in what he described as a “dodgy area”, a high-crime part of town. The implication from authorities, as Bottas relayed it, was that the Escalade was likely used in another crime and then abandoned.
“Apparently, they probably just did a crime with the car and dumped it,” Bottas said. “So, in my mind, it must have been like a getaway car or something.”
He finished with a typically Bottas blend of dry humour and shrug-it-off pragmatism: it’s “sad” to lose the car, he said — “but it’s pretty cool!”
If nothing else, it’s a reminder that for all the hyper-managed, high-security feel of an F1 weekend, drivers still live in the real world when they leave the circuit. And Miami, with its glossy hospitality sheen, remains a place where the sport’s circus can collide with everyday chaos in an instant — even when you’ve sensibly chosen the “more chill” option up the road.
