Sergio Perez has been backed as a “good addition” to the Cadillac F1 Team, with former team principal Otmar Szafnauer believing he “definitely has something to offer.”<\/p>\n
RacingNews365 understands that Perez has signed a deal to join F1’s newest outfit next season, where he will partner current Mercedes reserve driver Valtteri Bottas.<\/p>\n
Perez departed the pinnacle of motorsport at the end of last season following an agreement to part ways with Red Bull but is set to return in 2026.<\/p>\n
Joining Cadillac represents an interesting challenge for Perez, who will first need to overcome the initial hurdle of proving he is still quick enough to compete in F1.<\/p>\n
The expectation is that the American team will be positioned in the midfield or towards the back of the grid.<\/p>\n
Perez spent several seasons in the midfield with Force India\/Racing Point under Szafnauer’s leadership before joining Red Bull, and his former boss expects him to perform well.<\/p>\n
“If he finds the right environment, with all of his experience at both smaller teams with less budget and Red Bull, he\u2019s got good feedback, so he definitely has something to offer,” Szafnauer told PlanetF1.<\/p>\n
“Especially perhaps, a new team coming in that needs an experienced driver for the first couple of years, Checo [Perez] would be a good addition.”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tPerez Red Bull struggles<\/p>\n
Perez’s return to F1 will bring significant eyes from Mexico, with the driver having a staggering fan base in his home nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, a lot of the initial attention in the F1 paddock will be on whether the former Red Bull driver remains fast enough to be in the series.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is a question which will also be asked of Bottas, who is yet to compete since leaving Sauber at the end of 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Perez, he failed to overcome the pressure of being Max Verstappen’s team-mate and, ultimately, dwindled out of the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perez’s struggles became a difficult watch in the Milton Keynes-based outfit, with Szafnauer having been surprised by how things ended at Red Bull.<\/p>\n
“I was surprised,” revealed Szafnauer. “When I worked with Checo, I remember him saying to me: \u2018I\u2019m going to beat [Nico] Hulkenberg.\u2019<\/p>\n
“I thought that\u2019d be great if you could actually achieve that, because Hulkenberg was a great driver then, and now, and very fast over a lap.<\/p>\n
“It took Sergio two years, but he ended up beating Hulkenberg [seventh and ninth, respectively, in 2016].<\/p>\n
“It was very close. That really impressed me about Sergio and he did that through his own hard work, focus, and mental tenacity at the time.<\/p>\n
“So I knew he was capable of that. I was a bit surprised that he didn\u2019t have that type of finish at Red Bull.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sergio Perez has been backed as a “good addition” to the Cadillac F1 Team, with former team principal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-95324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95324","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=95324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}