{"id":948979,"date":"2026-11-01T17:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T17:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/948979\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T17:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T17:46:15","slug":"cadillac-f1-2027-driver-latest-as-herta-and-bottas-rumours-swirl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/948979\/","title":{"rendered":"Cadillac F1 2027 driver latest as Herta and Bottas rumours swirl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Putting an American driver in the car is \u201cimportant\u201d to Cadillac<\/a> F1, but so too is the timing of any such a decision.<\/p>\n

That is according to team principal Marcin Budkowski, at a time where challengers are emerging to Valtteri Bottas, including Colton Herta, for an F1 2027 seat. With Sergio Perez\u2019s services secured under a new multi-year deal, Budkowski suggested that the team is in \u201cno rush\u201d to decide his teammate for next season.<\/p>\n

Cadillac F1 in \u2018no rush\u2019 on completing 2027 line-up<\/p>\n

Ahead of Perez\u2019s home race, it was announced that he had re-signed with Cadillac F1 for at least the next three seasons. Bottas\u2019 status was not addressed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the team ran Herta in a fifth FP1 session of the season in Mexico. It was thought that this would bag him his FIA Super Licence, though amid some confusion, it has since emerged that he will require another 100km session to reach that landmark, as he contends for a Cadillac race seat.<\/p>\n

All the while, Mercedes reserve Fred Vesti has openly stated his desire to land that F1 2027 drive with the American team. He turned heads in Mexico FP1, getting within a tenth of teammate for the session Kimi Antonelli, who is poised to secure the Drivers\u2019 title this weekend.<\/p>\n

As an American team which flies its home flag high, and is currently ramping up its operations in the United States, Budkowski was asked by Sky F1 how important it is for Cadillac to field an American driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, it is important,\u201d he confirmed. \u201cIt\u2019s an American team. It races under an American flag. You\u2019ve seen it in Austin, we\u2019re building a strong American identity as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great to have an American driver. It increased the hype.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s also a question of timing. The right driver when the team is ready for it. And so we\u2019re assessing this.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the objective here this season was to have Colton as part of the team. He\u2019s doing some simulator development for us. He\u2019s done five FP1s now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one more than expected because in Monza, unfortunately, we had an issue on his car that prevented it to do any meaningful running in Monza. We might do more FP1s with him to give him more experience. I think it\u2019s part of the process we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Budkowski was quizzed on whether Herta is ready to step up to the F1 2027 grid as teammate to Perez.<\/p>\n

The California native swapped IndyCar for Formula 2 as part of his quest to reach Formula 1, though has found the transition challenging in certain aspects. He sits 19th in the current championship standings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is, Checo has been really strong this year, on track, off track. He\u2019s pushing us very hard. He\u2019s driving really well,\u201d Budkowski continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s pushing us very hard here at the track and at the factory, he\u2019s giving a lot of feedback. He\u2019s won races. He\u2019s been part of winning organisations and is a force in the team. But he\u2019s won his extension on the track. He\u2019s been overall the quicker and the better driver this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there was an opportunity. What are the chances that he would complete his 300 races on our first season as the Cadillac F1 team here in Mexico. We did this mega show run. It was a great opportunity to announce this extension. I think it was just an opportunity because it was the right time, the right place.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the second seat and for our future driver strategy, we have no rush to either announce it or even potentially decide it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, as Cadillac weighs up its options, Bottas received clear guidance on what he must do to also retain his drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s done a really good race in Austin,\u201d said his team boss. \u201cHe was strong in qualifying. He was strong in the race. That\u2019s what he needs to do: race in, race out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alas, while Bottas scored Cadillac\u2019s best result in F1 to date, P13 in China, more recently he has struggled to consistently match the level of Perez.<\/p>\n

No obvious explanation as to why currently exists for team and driver.<\/p>\n

Asked what are the difficulties stopping Bottas, a 10-time grand prix winner, showing the pace expected of him, Budkowski replied: \u201cIt\u2019s a very good question.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually the question we\u2019re asking ourselves collectively with Valtteri and with the engineering team, because some races, we don\u2019t actually see a reason for it in the data.<\/p>\n

\u201cValtteri doesn\u2019t see a reason for it neither in terms of there\u2019s no big issue in the car. But, he\u2019s a racing driver, he\u2019s an experienced racing driver. He knows what he can extract from a race car and what he can\u2019t, and he just says, \u2018I can\u2019t extract more pace from this car.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut let\u2019s face it, we\u2019re a new team. We have this car. It\u2019s not a perfect car. It\u2019s a car that\u2019s been put together in a very short period of time by a team of people who never worked together before and from a white sheet of paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to accept that we\u2019re not giving these guys the best possible equipment, and we don\u2019t have, as a team, enough strength and depth to have full certainty that the equipment we have is perfect and is equal.<\/p>\n

More on Cadillac from PlanetF1.com<\/p>\n

Colton Herta admits FIA Super Licence confusion amid Valtteri Bottas replacement rumours<\/a><\/p>\n

Mercedes reserve confirms Cadillac F1 interest as Bottas pressure increases<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re looking at it together, from the team side and from the driver side, and that\u2019s why also we\u2019re taking the time to try to understand exactly what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next: Haas boss delivers first reaction to Esteban Ocon Mexican GP driver swap<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Putting an American driver in the car is \u201cimportant\u201d to Cadillac F1, but so too is the timing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,3550,68659,817,813,816,818,44,85,1512],"class_list":["post-948979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cadillac","tag-colton-herta","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-valtteri-bottas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}