Why Cadillac F1 driver delay makes no sense – With June Formula One racing to conclude this weekend with the Austrian Grand Prix, there’s one month remaining before the sport’s mid-summer break which is usually when significant driver decisions for next season are finalised. Yet despite F1’s eleventh team bearing up for the2026 season, as yet they have confirmed non of their drivers.
Of course none of the sport’s top drivers from McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull would ever take a punt on such a new outfit, so the question is why are Cadillac delaying this decision? Add to this that just five drivers are out of contract this year, those being George Russell, Kimi Antonelli, Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda and Franco Colapinto.
As a new team with no previous F1 experience or a database of circuit relevant data, Cadillac will surely opt for two drivers with expensive F1 experience. Leaving the grid last season were Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez and Zhou Guanyu. The Chinese driver only ever drove two seasons for bottom of the pile kick Sauber and is surely out of contention, although his vast array of Chinese financial backers could bring much needed funds to a new F1 team.
Cadillac F1 driver options are limited
That said, Serio Perez comes with a wealth of South American financial support and having raced for a number of teams between 2011-2024, he is the driver with the most experience. Bottas was number two at Mercedes to Lewis Hamilton and his five years with the then world champions saw him claim ten Grand Prix victories whilst Perez has just six to his name.
Yet Bottas was in a far superior car than Perez, proven by the fact that Mercedes raced to 59 1-2 Grand Prix finishes in record time. Unlike with Hamilton and Rosberg as team mates, who finished the drivers championship 1-2 each season, Bottas was only able to deliver this for Mercedes in two of his five yers as Hamilton’s team mate. Perez on the other hand had to contend with Max Verstappen, considered by most to be the greatest driver since Michael Schumacher.
Kevin Magnussen is another option, yet his time at Haas F1 had begun to see him eclipsed by team mate Nico Hulkenberg, with the German beating him in qualifying 16-6 and finishing ahead in the Grand Prix 17-5.
Liam Lawson is surely out of the running since he failed spectacularly against Max Verstappen for the first two weekends of 2025 and is now being beaten by his rookie team mate Isack Hadjar. This leaves just Yuki Tsunoda, who after five seasons in the Red Bull family is lamest certain to be released from both teams.
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Although the Japanese driver has improved in the last two seasons, the reason he gained an F1 seat was due to his F1 sponsors of the Red Bull owned F1 outfits. These seem to be the choices for Cadillac, with the likes of Mick Schumacher too long out of the sport and Franco Colapinto looking to be struggling after his mega start with Williams last season.
There was talk when the eleventh team application was in the Andretti name, that the new team would bring into F1 an American born driver. Yet that experiment was performed by Williams with Logan Sargeant who despite his fails wealth could not transform that support into half decent results on track.
Colton Herta, the Californian blonde haired bombshell who races in Indycar has been regularly touted as the latest potential Murican who may cross the pond to race I F1. Now in his eighth season in Indycar with 14 pole positions, 9 wins and 18 other podiums Herta is no longer the young buck he was when in 2021 he was first suggested as F1 material. Further, he has been eclipsed in recent years by the new kid o the block, Alex Palou, who like Verstappen is smashing records in North America for fun.
Herta had his best season in 2024, when he was runner up to Palou in the championship and now has the required points for an F1 super license. Yet this season in Indycar, a wealth of new talent is emerging with rookie Robert Swartzman, from an F3 and F2 background claimed blue ribbon pole of the year at the Indianapolis 500 and last weekend at Road America another sparkling new driver, Louis Foster blew the field away on Saturday and is making a name for himself in the sport.
Perez and Bottas should be announced
It feels as though the best options available to Cadillac right now won’t significantly change much over the coming months and so the question again is, ‘why not decide and announce the 2026 lineup?’ Well Cadillac’s best options, arguably Bottas and Perez are going nowhere although Perez’s management claimed in May he had ‘multiple’ enquiries from F1 teams – the other besides Cadillac assumed to be Alpine. Yet the likely lineup of Perez and Bottas should just be announced.
Should Aston Martin solve their current ‘correlation problems’ Adrian Newey says may take two years to fix, then the team could be looking to upgrade its driver lineup to include those with recent F1 wins. This would allow Fernando Alonso to do a ‘multi-year’’ deal with Cadillac and extend his illustrious career even longer.
Although with the biggest F1 car and power unit regulation overhaul coming in 2026, the Spaniard is crossing his fingers that Aston Martin and Honda emerge the wonder package for the new F1 era. So there’s little point him leaving until that throw of the dice is complete.
To be in with a chance of upgrading its driver lineup in the coming few seasons, Cadillac will need to offer some kind of promise of progression and in the ever complex world of F1 its no guarantee. Its best hope of some kind of success would be to recruit F1 race winners and drivers who know how a top team operates, the alternative is for the team to become another ‘also ran’ type operation, as has been and is – Haas F1.
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Hiring both Perez & Bottas would probably be the best decision to maximize available F1 racing experience as a start-up team in a season with considerable technical regulation changes.
As for some mentions, Lawson will almost certainly stay put at VCARB (& likewise, Colapinto at Alpine) & Tsunoda is definitely a viable option for Cadillac, given his uncertain future, & Mick hasn’t stood a concrete chance at any point due to the above-mentioned factor of being away excessively long for someone without vast F1 racing experience nor any sporting success in the series.
Magnussen, like Ricciardo, has made clear that he’s definitively done with racing in F1 this time around & most likely only a top team offer would change his mind if anything.
Herta actually still doesn’t have enough super license points to qualify & he’s unlikely to reach eligibility this year either, so Jak Crawford is the only viable American driver option for next season, especially as he’s likely to reach eligibility at the current rate.