Cadillac F1 drivers Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez have been branded “rusty” by team director Mario Andretti.<\/p>\n
Andretti, the 1978 F1 world champion, serves on the board of grand prix racing’s newest team, which has performed well during its first three weekends, although it has yet to score a point.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Both drivers have returned to the grid in 2026 after sitting out 2025, after losing their Stake and Red Bull seats, respectively, following the 2024 season, although Bottas did conduct some F1 running in older machinery during his stint as the Mercedes reserve driver.<\/p>\n
Between them, Bottas and Perez have 533 grands prix worth of experience and are the third-most experienced driver pairing in F1 history, only behind Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll on 620 and Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc on 557.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, Andretti, himself a veteran of 128 starts believes the Finn and Mexican are “rusty” as they begin their comeback season.<\/p>\n
“The main thing that really interests me is, I want to hear from the drivers, and that\u2019s really what it\u2019s all about,” Andretti said on the Driven to Wynn podcast prior to the Japanese GP.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“To be honest with you, I think they\u2019re both just a little bit rusty. They\u2019ve both been out of the cockpit for at least one season.<\/p>\n
“With the new package and everything else, they\u2019re being very careful, you know, just to participate, and not set anything back by maybe going out there and creating more work that\u2019s needed.<\/p>\n
“But the initial comments, clearly, I think we\u2019re lacking some downforce, especially rear stability. That\u2019s what I keep hearing from both of them and things like that.<\/p>\n
“And the other side is to totally try to understand how to take advantage of the power unit for what the delivery is, between keeping the battery charge and all that sort of thing.<\/p>\n
“But that\u2019s not only the problem that we have. We\u2019re not the only ones who have that issue.<\/p>\n
“Outside of, say, Mercedes and Ferrari, it seems like everybody else is searching deeply for how to really maximise their situation.<\/p>\n
“As a driver, I think, to be able to extract everything out of the chassis itself, now, all of a sudden, you\u2019ve got to relearn how to use the throttle, how to use everything.<\/p>\n
“So I\u2019m not sure I am envying the drivers at the moment. I\u2019m almost happy that I\u2019m on the sideline.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cadillac F1 drivers Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez have been branded “rusty” by team director Mario Andretti. Andretti,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591215,"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":{"0":"post-591214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-f1-calendar","13":"tag-f1-live","14":"tag-f1-results","15":"tag-f1-standings","16":"tag-ferrari","17":"tag-formula-1","18":"tag-formula1","19":"tag-lewis-hamilton","20":"tag-max-verstappen","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-racing","23":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591214","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=591214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}