{"id":183218,"date":"2025-10-01T19:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T19:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/183218\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T19:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T19:07:12","slug":"eastwood-named-cadillac-formula-1-simulator-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/183218\/","title":{"rendered":"Eastwood named Cadillac Formula 1 simulator driver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Northern Ireland&#8217;s Charlie Eastwood has been named as one of three simulator drivers for Cadillac&#8217;s new Formula 1 team.<\/p>\n<p>Eastwood competes in the World Endurance Championship, is a winner at the Le Mans 24 hour race and previously worked with the Mercedes F1 team as a simulator driver.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>American manufacturer Cadillac will join the Formula 1 grid in 2026 and named multiple race winners Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez as their drivers.<\/p>\n<p>Former Indycar champion Simon Pagenaud and ex-Haas F1 reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi will make up the simulator team alongside Eastwood, while Indycar race winner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/formula1\/articles\/cwy94j5gjv9o?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bsport%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Colton Herta will be the team&#039;s test driver.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Colton Herta will be the team&#8217;s test driver. <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Simulator drivers work at the factory of Formula 1 teams to develop the car and test new parts, and on race weekends they provide support to the race drivers by testing set-ups linked to the real-world Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Eastwood said he was &#8220;extremely honoured&#8221; to be involved with the Cadillac F1 project.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I will be able to contribute to their Formula 1 entry by supporting the team through simulator work and development programs leaning on past experiences,&#8221; said Eastwood, 30.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I want to thank Cadillac for the trust they have placed in me, especially at such an important time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Eastwood is a factory driver for Corvette, a sister brand of Cadillac under the General Motors banner, in the World Endurance Championship and won the most recent round in Fuji in the LMGT3 class.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>He also finished third at the Le Mans 24 Hours in June, a race he won with Aston Martin in 2020.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759345632_538_\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland&#8217;s Charlie Eastwood has been named as one of three simulator drivers for Cadillac&#8217;s new Formula 1&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,4228,48,92373,578,92376,576,577,92375,50590,2191,82,92377,1713,92374],"class_list":["post-183218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-cadillac","tag-canada","tag-charlie-eastwood","tag-f1","tag-factory-driver","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-le-mans-24-hours","tag-mercedes-f1-team","tag-sergio-perez","tag-sports","tag-test-driver","tag-valtteri-bottas","tag-world-endurance-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183218","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=183218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}