Revealed: The two lead driver choices for new Cadillac F1 team

Two drivers have been tipped as the leading candidates for Cadillac’s debut F1 season.

US car giant General Motors will enter F1 as the sport’s 11th team in 2026 under its luxury Cadillac brand. The new team will join F1 at the start of a new era of regulations and be a joint effort between General Motors and TWG.

Graeme Lowdon has been appointed as team principal and the US squad have already hired several experienced F1 staff from rival teams.

Cadillac are yet to announce their driver line up for 2026 but several names have been linked, including Sergio Perez, Valtteri Bottas, Mick Schumacher, Zhou Guanyu and Felipe Drugovich, as well as Americans Zak Crawford and Colton Herta.

Cadillac to sign Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas?

F1.com reporter and presenter Lawrence Barretto has predicted that Cadillac will opt for an experienced, and race-winning, driver combination consisting of Perez and Bottas.

That represents a U-turn from the original thought process of pairing a veteran with a younger driver.

“I’ve talked to Checo a couple of times over the last couple of months," Barretto told F1.com. "What I can tell you is he is super hungry to come back to Formula 1, for the right project. And I think the reason why Cadillac is so attractive to him is because of everything they are throwing at it.

"And I think he understands that year one isn't going to be the year where he's going to set the world alight. But I think it is an opportunity for him to use the skillset that actually made him so highly rated, which was the way he motivated a team, the way that he could manage tyres, the way that he could develop a car over the course of a season and through the winter.

"I think all of these things are not readily available in Formula 1 from the drivers who are available on the market at the minute. And I think that's why Checo’s name was in the mix so early on and why I think he is going to be in the car. They've got to have him in the car because they need that experience.”

On Bottas, Barretto added: “I think we need to look holistically at what Cadillac are trying to achieve.

”And I think they want to hit the ground running as quickly as possible, and they want to find a way for the team to be able to build quite quickly. And I think then you therefore need experience, and I think that Valtteri and Checo together can potentially offer that.

"You've got Valtteri here. He stayed hungry in the paddock. He took this gig as Mercedes reserve. He's thrown himself into all of the social media work that they get him to do.

“He is available for everything. But he's doing the important stuff. He's in the simulator, he's across all the engineering meetings, he understands the development of the 2026 Mercedes, which I think could be significant.

"He's got immense experience of the Mercedes power unit. He obviously had the Ferrari power unit when he was at Sauber. I'm making a checklist that it's impossible to say no to Valtteri Bottas, and I think that's why those two are the favourites to join that team because I think they need that kind of experience.”