Sergio Perez has spent a year on the sidelines. He’s watched, he’s regrouped, and now he’s calling his shot: Cadillac will be on an F1 podium “in the near future.”
The six-time grand prix winner returns to the grid next season with the sport’s newest entrant, partnering fellow comeback kid Valtteri Bottas in a line-up that screams experience: 527 starts, 16 victories between them, and a feel for Sundays that can’t be taught. It’s an unmistakable signal of intent from a team carrying the Cadillac badge and a stack of General Motors resource behind it.
Perez has had a look under the skin. He’s been through the GM simulator, toured the new base in Charlotte and checked in at the team’s UK facility near Silverstone. And later this week he’ll be back in a Formula 1 cockpit for the first time since the 2024 Abu Dhabi finale, logging laps at Imola in a black-liveried Ferrari SF-23 to tune up before 2026.
“I think I’ve been on the podium with all the teams I drove for, except McLaren,” Perez told Reuters. “We’re going to start at the back, progressively move forward. But ultimately, in the near future, that (the podium) is a target. It doesn’t matter who gets there, as long as it’s Cadillac.”
There’s an unvarnished realism in there, but the conviction is obvious. Perez has made a career out of maximizing imperfect machinery and turning chaotic Sundays into trophies. In a reset year, that’s exactly the profile you want.
Inside the build, things are moving. Team principal Graeme Lowdon says Cadillac’s prototype cleared FIA chassis homologation earlier this year and the production process is underway. “The good news is it’s coming along,” he told Formula 1. “It’s on schedule. We are currently laying up the first two race chassis.” For a first-year squad, that sentence is gold dust.
Cadillac isn’t pretending this will be easy. New teams often arrive with light wallets and heavy reality checks. That’s not this. GM is all-in, the recruitment has been aggressive, and the org chart is peppered with familiar names: Lowdon at the top, Nick Chester driving development as technical director, Rob White handling operations, and Pat Symonds on board as executive engineering consultant. It’s a serious group with serious backing.
And the timing? About as favorable as it gets. 2026 ushers in smaller, lighter cars with active aerodynamics and a new power unit formula. A reset like this narrows gaps, at least on paper. It gives an entrant the chance to aim at moving targets rather than a decade of baked-in advantages. That’s the theory, anyway. Reality tends to pick its moments.
“You know, normally the new teams that have come in the past, they’ve always been struggling financially,” Perez said. “This is a team that is coming for real and it’s coming to do things in the best way and to win… It doesn’t really matter for me where we start, it’s how quickly we are able to develop and how quickly we are able to move forward.”
Before any of that, there’s muscle memory to refresh. Imola is less about lap times and more about getting the band together. Perez wants the engineers and mechanics speaking the same language long before the car turns a wheel in anger. He joked he’s “curious… how many laps my neck will do before it gets destroyed,” but the subtext is clear: this is a shakedown for the human side as much as the driver.
There’s also the small matter of bragging rights. Cadillac arrives as the first new operation in a decade, stepping into a paddock where Haas has flown the American flag alone since 2016. Haas is still hunting its first podium. Cadillac, buoyed by GM’s motorsport pedigree and a double-grand-prix-winning lineup, isn’t shy about saying it wants one as soon as practical. Could it get there first? The safe money avoids predictions. The romantic money likes the idea.
So, what does success look like in year one? Reliable finishes, clean execution, and an upward curve would be a strong start. A shock result in the right conditions? That’s where Perez in particular earns his keep. He’s made a career of bagging opportunities that appear for about 15 minutes on a Sunday and disappear if you blink.
Cadillac’s talking a careful game, and that’s smart. But make no mistake: this is not a toe in the water. It’s a full dive into a brand-new rule set with a heavyweight manufacturer at its back and a driver who believes, perhaps more than most, that there’s always a podium hiding somewhere in the chaos. If you’re Cadillac, that’s exactly the energy you want walking through the door.
