Cadillac admit they probed Red Bull about Sergio Perez reservations

Cadillac’s F1 boss has revealed the team spoke to Red Bull and Sergio Perez to address reservations they had prior to signing him.

Perez has secured a comeback to the F1 grid next season with the new Cadillac team, where he will partner fellow multiple grand prix winner Valtteri Bottas.

The 35-year-old was dropped from Red Bull’s driver line-up at the end of 2024 despite having a further two years on his contract following a dramatic drop-off in performance alongside then-teammate Max Verstappen.

Cadillac’s CEO Dan Towriss said the team reached out to both Red Bull and Perez with questions and admitted to having some “scepticism” about the Mexican’s form during his most recent F1 season.

"Certainly there was a lot of conversation around the gap - having been out for a full year,” Towriss told media including Crash.net.

"When you look at Valtteri, he's at the track every weekend, right? And so it was important for us to know where Sergio is at, in terms of his desire to be back in F1 and also his belief in our project, in leading the Cadillac F1 team.

"But we couldn't have been more pleased with his response. In our meetings with him, he outperformed, I guess you could say.

"We had questions. We had scepticism around some of these things, and he answered all of our questions, and passed our tests, I guess, with flying colours. So we were pleased to put him forward.”

Cadillac explain evaluation process

Cadillac ultimately settled on the highly experienced Bottas-Perez combination after a thorough evaluation process.

"We spent a lot of time looking at past experience and kind of what the state of the world was at Sauber, and how Valtteri performed with the car that's there. Plus kind of qualifying performance versus race performance,” Towriss explained.

"Then, in particular, probably a more complicated scenario was Red Bull, right? That's been an interesting kind of saga to watch.

“A team that's really built around one driver, but has two, and clearly none of the other drivers have fared well in that second seat, from that standpoint. So we did take a lot of time to talk to people at Red Bull and get information and feedback.

"The process was lengthy and thorough from that standpoint. And again, what that means is, having looked through all that, we feel very good about Checo, his desire to be in F1, to make a statement, to show the performance that he has, and put that last season or so from Red Bull in the rear view mirror."