With Cadillac F1 slowly unveiling different aspects of its incoming open-wheel team, we’ve been picking up key details about the team’s goals and intentions.
Keeping those in mind, I’ve picked my ideal two-driver line-up for the team, sticking with what team personnel have communicated.
Cadillac F1: Who should drive for the American team?
While I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Cadillac entry by now, I want to just run through a little refresher of how this team came to be. In 2023, the FIA opened up an expression of interest for prospective teams to apply to join the F1 grid, and the only team that made it through that first round was Andretti Autosport.
Andretti Autosport was helmed by Michael Andretti, the son of 1978 World Champion Mario Andretti, and it was his ties with Group 1001 and Gainbridge head Dan Towriss that gave them the funds to make this happen.
To better bolster its entry, Andretti changed its name to Andretti Global and signed Cadillac as a prospective power unit supplier in the future.
But there was some bad blood between Michael Andretti and Formula One Management, which resulted in the FOM rejecting the entry in pretty brutal fashion.
Michael Andretti stepped down, Dan Towriss stepped up, Cadillac took on a bigger role, and voila: Just before the end of the 2024 F1 season, the team got its approval to join the grid in 2026.
It’ll take until 2029 before Cadillac’s power units are ready, so in the meantime, the team will run with Ferrari units. Its major goals during that Ferrari period all revolve around getting the team up and running efficiently.
That means hiring capable staff, producing a chassis, learning how to work together as a team, and figuring out how to operate as an 11th team in the Formula 1 sphere against a whole lot of great competition.
I spoke with Graeme Lowdon at the Miami Grand Prix, and he told me that the team is really staying focused on building its foundation.
Driver choice is definitely important, but at this point in time, it’s a little less important than hiring the folks who will bring their chassis to life.
It’s still early enough in the year where there are plenty of great racers available, but again — the team’s first few years are going to be all about finding its footing. Cadillac intends to really become a force to be reckoned with when it brings its power units to the sport.
Has that stopped fans, pundits, and journalists from speculating on who those drivers should be? Absolutely not — and today, I’m going to make a case for my ideal Cadillac F1 line-up.
More on Cadillac in Formula 1:
👉 How ‘a good cake’ convinced ex-Manor boss to join the Cadillac F1 team
👉 How Cadillac aims to finally embody the ‘American dream’ in F1
Cadillac F1 needs a veteran: Sergio Perez
First and foremost, I think we’re going to need a Formula 1 veteran to really get this team off the ground, and we’ve got plenty of options to choose from considering how many rookies we’ve seen on the grid this year.
I’ve seen people make pretty convincing cases for a lot of different drivers. Zhou Guanyu makes sense because Cadillac F1 team boss Graeme Lowdon is his manager.
Valtteri Bottas makes sense, considering he’s lived through Mercedes’ successes and Sauber’s struggles, which should mean he knows what to do and what not to do when building a car.
Daniel Ricciardo makes sense because he’s basically as close to an American as you can get without actually being American, and because he has a huge fan base here in the US.
But I’m going in a different direction. I’m picking Sergio Perez.
I know there are a lot of folks out there who are absolutely going to hate that idea, but stick with me while I explain my logic.
Perez is one of those drivers who never quite got a good shot in F1 — and I know people will say, “Well, Red Bull!” But I think we should all be very clear by now that being the second driver at Red Bull is one of the most thankless jobs on the grid.
When Perez first started struggling in 2023, the team largely put his concerns on the back burner because Max Vestappen was absolutely dominating — and in 2024, when those very same issues started to compromise Verstappen as well, Red Bull had to acknowledge that they probably went down the wrong developmental path.
While I don’t know that Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda are exactly perfect yardsticks by which to measure Perez, I do think the fact that Red Bull has seen both of its second drivers struggle this season should imply that Perez was not the only slow thing about that car.
What Checo does have in spades is experience. He spent a decade and a half in Formula 1 experiencing all kinds of varying rulesets and working with a variety of midfield teams in an effort to keep them competitive. He’s managed to take a mediocre car and race it into finishing positions that it otherwise shouldn’t have earned. And he’s helped develop many of those middling teams into much stronger and more well-rounded competitors.
Let’s think back to what Graeme Lowdon told me in Miami. The early goal of Cadillac F1 is not to jump out of the gates and win a championship right from the get-go.
Yes, that would be nice — but if you’re going to be pragmatic, it would probably be good to assume that it’ll take a few years for a brand-new team built from the ground-up to find its footing. And you’re going to want an experienced, reliable guy behind the wheel to keep you trucking along developmentally.
And yes, there’s also the popularity angle.
Sergio Perez brings with him a huge fanbase in North America, as well as heaps of money from Mexican sponsors. Cadillac and Dan Towriss both have big budgets, but a lucrative sponsorship package from Telmex or other Perez sponsors like Disney, Nescafé, and KitKat will be a massive help in getting the team off the ground.
For me, that’s huge. I think you can make a really great case for other veterans to join the team, like Valtteri Bottas, but there is no driver who has Perez levels of backing. That’s why he’s my pick for the first Cadillac driver.
Cadillac F1 needs fresh blood: Alex Palou
Now, with our veteran sorted out, we’re going to need to line up a second driver. When the current Cadillac team was primarily helmed by Andretti Global, they were bullish about signing an American driver.
American fans have been dreaming about an American driver on an American team ever since Haas joined the grid, and you definitely got the sense that Andretti wanted to fulfill that dream.
And it makes sense. Andretti Global has teams in race series all around the world, and over in IndyCar, it fields two American drivers: Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood.
Herta’s name has been most closely tied to the Cadillac seat, but I’ll be honest — I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him as the ideal contender.
If you’ve been keeping tabs on IndyCar, you’ll know that his 2025 season has been kind of a disaster thanks to a lot of little mistakes by both Herta and the team, and it’s really not looking like he’ll secure a strong enough championship finish to earn a super license.
Keep looking around, and you’ll find that there aren’t a ton of other American drivers lined up to slot into Cadillac F1. I think the best fit for the American criteria would be Jak Crawford, who’s in his third year of Formula 2.
But if you’ve noticed, it certainly seems like Cadillac has been walking back its “go American or go home” mandate.
In Miami, team principal Graeme Lowdon said that while a lot of people are hoping for an American driver, the team needs to consider the “merit” of the drivers it signs.
To my mind, there really aren’t any standout American drivers right now. But for Cadillac’s second seat, I’m still keeping my eye on the American motorsport scene. I’m picking none other than Alex Palou.
Maybe part of this is a bit selfish, because I’d like to see IndyCar get a little more unpredictable again — but when you look at the way Palou is dominating the sport right now, it’s hard not to wonder what he could do in a Formula 1 machine.
At the time of writing, we’re five races into the IndyCar season. Alex Palou has won four of them; in the race he didn’t win, he finished second.
He has an almost 100-point deficit on the next-closest driver in the championship, and there’s no sign of him slowing down.
His biggest weakness in IndyCar is his performance on oval tracks — but that’s of no concern in Formula 1.
And Palou isn’t just good in open-wheel racing. He’s been a regular feature at major endurance racing events like the Rolex 24 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and last year, he seriously impressed with Cadillac over in France.
It was his first time at the track, and yet he managed to work magic every single time he was behind the wheel. Trust me — I attended that race as a guest of Cadillac’s, and the entire team was in awe of his performance.
The only issue I can see with Palou centers around some contract drama that took place a few years ago. If you remember Oscar Piastri’s bombshell tweet that he hadn’t agreed to race with Alpine in Formula 1 back in 2023, well — Palau had pretty much the same thing happen in IndyCar.
Chip Ganassi Racing announced that Alex Palou would drive with the team in IndyCar in 2023… and Palou said, actually, that wasn’t going to happen.
He’d inked a deal with McLaren that would have seen him serve as a reserve driver in F1 along with competing in IndyCar, with the whole goal being to one day put Palou in the F1 seat.
The whole affair had to go to court, where it was determined that Palou was contractually obligated to remain with Chip Ganassi, and that he’d have to pay damages to McLaren.
The sticking point here is that McLaren’s IndyCar program is powered by Chevrolet engines. Chevy is a subsidiary of General Motors just like Cadillac.
The reason he raced with Cadillac at Le Mans was because Chip Ganassi had an endurance racing partnership with Caddy, but that partnership folded heading into the 2025 season.
Would his CGR ties have helped Palou get a seat at Cadillac’s F1 team? Did he annoy enough people at GM with his McLaren contract shenanigans to prevent him from being considered for a future role with the company? I
t’s hard to say. But I’m still putting my eggs in the Alex Palou basket; it’s hard to think of another non-F1 driver who has been so incredibly impressive.
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