After weeks of various outlets putting the silly in "F1 silly season" and reporting on reports of announcements, the American team Cadillac, which will be joining the Formula 1 grid in 2026, has officially confirmed its driver lineup for next year. In a huge win for both second drivers and 35-year-olds everywhere, the team has signed Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez.
The lineup alone is already enough to make Cadillac a fan favorite. The team's American F1 contemporary in Haas has yet to foster any real patriotic affinity—or, really, much recognition at all outside of Guenther Steiner—since 2016. Time will tell whether Cadillac can succeed where Haas hasn't, but starting off with this much name recognition certainly doesn't hurt: Between Bottas and Pérez, Cadillac's lineup already boasts 527 race starts of experience; and, better yet, both drivers are generally likable.
Anyone who watched F1 in 2024 will be familiar with Pérez, who was Red Bull's second driver until the very end of the season. It was not an inspiring showing. Pérez started off cleaning up podium spots as his teammate, Max Verstappen, won races; this was enough to earn him a multiyear extension, but his performance seemed to fall off a cliff soon after. While Verstappen more or less coasted to his fourth consecutive World Drivers' Championship that year (the McLarens and Ferraris were the fastest cars to close the season, but Verstappen started too strong to be under any real threat), Pérez finished a woeful eighth. Red Bull presumably paid a hefty buyout to undo the extension signed just months prior, and Pérez finally bowed out to the team's young blood, Liam Lawson.
So far in 2025, the young blood has done atrociously. Pérez is perhaps the only driver in F1 whose stock has improved after sitting out for a year—but even if he isn't, the scale of improvement is unmatched. With both of his replacements fighting for their lives to get out of Q1 each race weekend, his 2024 performance looked less like he forgot which direction to turn the steering wheel and more like a problem with the car. Verstappen certainly believed so from the start. And then people started to remember that, although Perez struggled in 2024, he'd spent three years prior as Red Bull's miracle answer to its second seat woes—and, also, did people really forget that he once won a race on a midfield team after starting last on the grid? Here is the worst second driver of 2024, yes, underperforming in a car that Max Verstappen hated; here is also a veteran who once finished fourth in the Drivers' Championship in a Racing Point.
Remembering Valtteri Bottas as a driver requires going a bit further back in your memory. In the years 2022–24, Bottas was racing for a totally listless Alfa Romeo/Sauber team, in a polite and friendly but ultimately unremarkable partnership with Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu. But from 2017 to 2020—before Sergio Pérez's ascension in 2021—Bottas at Mercedes was the platonic ideal of a World Champion's teammate. It didn't get much better than a driver with remarkable single-lap pace who could clock in and do what he needed to do for a 1-2 finish. As an added bonus for the team, he and Lewis Hamilton were able to get along. The 2020 season and the dreaded HAM-BOT-VER podium still haunts F1, and part of that was on Bottas. Bottas was good enough to make Mercedes kick their tires on promoting George Russell to the main team. His only sin was never being able to realistically challenge the greatest driver of his generation.
Bottas is also just a funny guy, which only came to the forefront after he achieved his freedom from the Mercedes pressure of trying to beat Lewis Hamilton and an endless cycle of one-year contracts. While Bottas's Alfa Romeo/Sauber years didn't let him show off his pace, they did allowing him to flex his personality. He grew a mustache and mullet. There was the "Bottass 2024" charity calendar, where he, well, showed his ass, and not for the first time. He wholeheartedly embraced his role as Australian Olympian Tiffany Cromwell's WAG/HAB and got really into gravel cycling. Like Pérez, Bottas left the F1 grid for the 2025 season, but unlike Pérez, he had a happier conclusion of rejoining Mercedes as its reserve driver. Or, as Bottas puts it on his Instagram, their third driver. Speaking of Bottas's Instagram, he posted a very subtle hint just prior to Cadillac's official announcement of their driver lineup.
It is poetic that Bottas and Pérez, who have taken different paths through F1 but wound up embodying the same archetype, have reunited at this juncture toward the end of their careers. The term "second driver" has fundamentally derogatory connotations. It describes a driver so evidently nonthreatening to their teammate's success that they can safely be deemed a second priority for the team. At the same time, it describes a driver who is good enough to be a slam dunk signing for virtually any team on the grid, and a great and fair teammate. Mercedes' HAM-BOT-VER masterclasses in 2020 were strategically enabled thanks to Bottas. And, though it pales in comparison to the eventual controversy that ended the championship, Pérez showed his defensive racing chops by holding up Hamilton in 2021.
There isn't anything to dislike about this decision. The influx of rookies this year lessens the pressure for a new team to bring on new drivers; Pérez and Bottas already bowed out for two of those rookies. Anyway, rookie drivers are a poor choice for an inexperienced or struggling team—though this wasn't the only reason for their disasters, just look at when Haas ran a crash-heavy lineup of Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher.
Pérez and Bottas's experience will help Cadillac develop a car during the all-pivotal first year. If—or really when—it becomes time to move on to a less experienced prospect, Bottas in particular has experience working in an advisory capacity after mentoring Kimi Antonelli this year. And for the fans, the Pérez–Bottas pairing will help settle one of many disputes still plaguing the 2021 F1 season: Which of the two, really, is the better (second) driver?
If one is prone to sentimentality, the new Cadillac lineup is an exercise in condensed tragedy for uniting these two drivers who have suffered compliments for underperforming compared to their more talented teammates. Even the evaluation of the lineup operates under the assumption that they will not be contending for a championship during their tenure. On the other hand, how many F1 drivers ever get a bit of glory to themselves? At least Bottas and Pérez finally have the opportunity to make their own history. They've earned it. After all, Valtteri Bottas currently holds the F1 record for most career points without ever winning a Drivers' Championship, with 1,797. Just below him on the leaderboard? Sergio Pérez with 1,638.
