Sergio Perez, Bottas’s teammate, in the Cadillac MAC-26 during Italian Grand Prix qualifying. Photo: Eustace Bagge, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Cadillac is 11th in the constructors’ standings with zero points. On Wednesday it committed one of its two race seats to Sergio Pérez until at least 2029. Read that as a reward for 2026 results and it makes no sense. Read it as a decision about 2029 and it makes a lot.
The team announced the extension ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix, where Pérez will make his 300th Formula 1 start in front of home fans. “I am fully committed for the next three years,” he said, which covers 2027, 2028 and 2029. Cadillac CEO Dan Towriss called him an “integral part” of the team. The announcement on Formula1.com gives no contract terms beyond the “at least 2029” framing, so how much of that is guaranteed is not public.
The year that matters is not 2027
Here is the argument: this deal is built around the engine, not the scoreboard. GM Performance Power Units, the joint venture of TWG Motorsports and General Motors, has been approved by the FIA as a power unit supplier from 2029. Towriss said in February that the focus is still 2029 for the in-house unit. Until then, Ferrari supplies Cadillac’s engines and gearboxes.
So Pérez’s contract runs to the season Cadillac stops being a customer and becomes a manufacturer. That is my reading, not something the team has said. But the overlap is hard to wave away. The hardest job in a new team’s development loop is turning a driver’s complaint into a design change. When the engine and the car come from different buildings, that translation gets easier to blame on someone else. When they come from one company, it does not.
Cadillac was explicit about what it wanted when it picked this pairing. Towriss cited experience, leadership and technical acumen, and GM’s Mark Reuss pointed to the value of driver feedback in developing a vehicle. A team that has never built a competitive F1 car wants the person who has driven for Red Bull, McLaren and Force India to tell it what a good one feels like. Nobody scores points for that, but it pays off later.
What Cadillac gets, and what it gives up
The upside is stability at a moment when stability is scarce. Cadillac’s own boss declined to discuss 2027 contracts in Austin, a sidestep we read closely at the time. Days later, one half of the question has an answer.
The cost is a long runway for a driver whose 2026 has included at least one costly mistake. In China, Pérez tried a lap-one move that ended with him and his teammate touching, and he took the blame and apologised publicly. Taking responsibility is a good sign. A three-year deal bets that those moments become rarer as the car improves.
There is also an opportunity cost. Towriss has said an American driver pathway is a goal, but not for the inaugural season, and the team already carries Zhou Guanyu as reserve and Colton Herta as test driver. With one seat now spoken for through 2029, that pathway runs through the other one, or waits.
The half of the lineup nobody mentioned
The announcement says nothing about Valtteri Bottas. That is not a hint of anything; a driver extension need not cover his teammate. It does mean the “Cadillac’s lineup” question is only half settled, and Aston Martin, the team directly above Cadillac in the standings, has already locked in its own 2027 pair. If Cadillac wants continuity to count for something, the second seat is the next test.
What to watch
Mexico City is the first look at Pérez as a long-term Cadillac driver, and Cadillac is seven points behind Aston Martin, still hunting its first. The bigger indicator comes later: any change to the engine timeline, and how Cadillac’s car holds up once the 2026 power units have been through a full winter of development. If 2029 slips, this contract has a different shape. If it holds, Cadillac will have signed its reference driver for exactly the season it needs him.
Lead image: Eustace Bagge, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
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