Cadillac F1 team principal Graeme Lowdon has explained why the “spark of excitement” displayed by Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez when he signed them will be critical next season.<\/p>\n
The Briton shared how the pair reacted to being told they had secured their F1 futures with the American project, which makes its debut in F1 in 2026.<\/p>\n
In Bottas and Perez, the General Motors-backed operation has one of the most experienced driver combinations in championship history, boasting 527 starts between them, along with 16 victories and 106 podiums.<\/p>\n
That experience will be key for F1’s newest team, and Lowdon hopes their shared enthusiasm will help “gel everything together” next term.<\/p>\n
“It was great to see the reaction of the drivers as well,” Lowdon told Formula 1. “Obviously, it’s clear for everyone we’ve gone for experience with Valtteri and Checo [Sergio Perez].<\/p>\n
“But when we told each driver, there was that spark of excitement as well, and, for me, that’s what I look for.<\/p>\n
“Then we look for their enthusiasm because if you have an enthusiastic driver line-up, that helps gel everything together.<\/p>\n
“And that’s what we’re building now, it’s a team and teams are all about people, and it’s bringing all those people together.”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tDiffering paths<\/p>\n
Having both failed to retain their seats in F1 for the current campaign, Bottas and Perez have taken divergent approaches to their season on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
Whilst the former has returned to Mercedes as reserve driver, the latter has stepped away from F1 entirely after being fired by Red Bull.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think he will have forgotten how to drive, that’s for sure,” Lowdon remarked about the Mexican driver. “He’s doing a bit of karting and we’ll have him on the simulator quite soon.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to do some testing in real-world cars as well. So I’ve got no doubts that he’ll be back up to speed in time.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, one of the advantages that we have in 2026 is unlike a normal championship year, where there’s only three days of testing, for 2026, there’s going to be an initial test in Barcelona and then two additional tests in Bahrain.<\/p>\n
“We’ll have three times the amount of testing, so that will help get them up to speed as well.”<\/p>\n
As for his Finnish future team-mate, Lowdom is pleased he has remained in the paddock, keeping “sharp” over the season.<\/p>\n
“With Valtteri, it’ll help a lot [that he’s been with Mercedes] because there’s a lot that is new in 2026 in terms of tyres and power units in particular,” he added. “So having an experienced driver like Valtteri, who’s up to speed on that kind of thing, is valuable.<\/p>\n
“The drivers don’t get to see the in-depth design secrets and all the rest of it, but I think it’s quite valuable to have a driver who hasn’t left the paddock, so each weekend he’ll be in all the engineering meetings, his mind staying sharp.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cadillac F1 team principal Graeme Lowdon has explained why the “spark of excitement” displayed by Valtteri Bottas and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,2476,578,2479,2477,2480,2478,930,576,577,932,1885,2475,582,82],"class_list":["post-143727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143727","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=143727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}