Cadillac asked questions about Sergio Perez’s motivation following the unfortunate end to his time at Red Bull, but was completely certain he would sign him after meetings with the winners of six races.
Perez signed a two-year contract extension at Red Bull last summer, but was dropped at the end of 2024 after scoring just 33 points in the final 13 rounds. The Mexicans remained without seats this season, but Cadillac signed his debut season alongside Valteri Bottas, with Dan Touris, CEO of Cadillac F1 Team and TWG Motorsports, saying the teams dealt with Perez’s departure from Red Bull during meetings.
“It’s true, there was a lot of conversation around the gap and I was out for a year,” Touris said. “If you look at Valtteri, you think he’s on the track every weekend, right? So it was important to know where Sergio was in terms of his desire to go back to Formula 1 and his belief in the project leading the Cadillac Formula 1 team.
“I think that again, in meeting him, he outperformed. If you say we have a question, we are skeptical about some of these things and he answered all our questions and passed our tests with the colours flying.
The poorly shaped run for Perez came while teammate Max Verstappen was winning the driver’s championship, but the struggles of both Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda of Red Bull also involved Cadillac’s thinking beyond the outcome of their respective drivers.
“We spent a lot of time seeing past experiences and world states in Sauber, and how Valtteri actually played in the car there and how he played in comparison to his race performance,” added Towriss.
“And in particular, perhaps the more complicated scenario was Red Bull? It was an interesting kind of saga, a team that is actually built around one driver but has two drivers.
“So I spent a lot of time talking to people from Red Bull and getting information and feedback, and it was long and thorough from that perspective.
“Again, that means that it looked everything up, I feel very good about Czecco, his desire to be in Formula 1 and his desire to make a statement, showing the performance he has and putting it down last season or so from Red Bull in the rearview mirror.”