ZANDVOORT, Netherlands \u2014 Max Verstappen says he’s happy to see his old teammate Sergio P\u00e9rez back for a \u201cfresh start\u201d in\u00a0Formula 1\u00a0and that his experience will be a major asset to the new Cadillac team in 2026.<\/p>\n
Cadillac\u00a0picked the experienced duo\u00a0of P\u00e9rez and former Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas to join the grid as the 11th team next year, even though neither has a race seat in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I saw the news come out, I sent a message to him. I\u2019m of course very happy for him that he got a seat,\u201d Verstappen said on Thursday ahead of the\u00a0Dutch Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The four-time world champion dismissed suggestions that P\u00e9rez’s disappointing end to his time at Red Bull last year \u2014 when he was\u00a0dropped\u00a0after poor results \u2014 could still affect the Mexican driver when he returns to F1.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fresh start now. I think it\u2019s not about one half of a season. That doesn\u2019t define what you can do. I think he\u2019s also quite easy in that. Some people maybe dwell on it a bit more, but for Checo (P\u00e9rez), it\u2019s a new start,\u201d Verstappen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re excited \u2014 new cars, completely new cars (under the changed 2026 regulations) also. He has shown a lot of great things, even before he got to Red Bull, and during the Red Bull times. So just go in there, enjoy it again, and have a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez made his F1 debut in 2011 and Verstappen said his years of experience across various teams and regulation changes would be \u201cvery valuable\u201d to Cadillac.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez said on a podcast in June that he’d been told Red Bull regretted the decision to drop him. His replacement Liam Lawson lasted only two races this year, then was dumped for Yuki Tsunoda, who is 18th in the standings with 10 races to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZANDVOORT, Netherlands \u2014 Max Verstappen says he’s happy to see his old teammate Sergio P\u00e9rez back for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-103550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}