Cadillac has divulged that it held talks with people at Red Bull to dispel the doubts that it retained about Sergio Perez‘s torrid Formula 1 season with the team in 2024.
Perez has been consigned to enduring the ongoing campaign on the sidelines as a harrowing conclusion to the previous season culminated in Red Bull releasing him.
But although his extensive experience made him an obvious candidate to represent F1’s latest addition to the grid, Cadillac conceded it harboured some reservations.
They centred on the Mexican’s wretched end to his time in the second Red Bull seat alongside Max Verstappen, which saw him return 21 points over his last 11 races.
Meanwhile, Cadillac was also uncertain whether Perez’s spell outside the paddock could prevent him from returning to the level that encouraged Red Bull to sign him.
Following last month’s British Grand Prix, though, Cadillac CEO Dan Towriss disclosed that a conversation with the six-time F1 race winner eradicated those concerns.
“Well, certainly there was a lot of conversation around the gap – having been out for a full year,” Towriss said.
“When you look at Valtteri [Bottas], he’s at the track every weekend, right?
“And so it was important for us to know where Sergio is at, in terms of his desire to be back in F1 and also his belief in our project, in leading the Cadillac F1 team.
“But we couldn’t have been more pleased with his response. In our meetings with him, he outperformed, I guess you could say. We had questions.
“We had scepticism around some of these things, and he answered all of our questions, and passed our tests, I guess, with flying colours. So we were pleased to put him forward.”
How extensive checks led Cadillac to sign Bottas/Perez
Along with wanting to evaluate how well Bottas performed in an uncompetitive Sauber car in 2024, Cadillac also sought to understand why Perez’s season unravelled.
Towriss, alongside General Motors president Mark Reuss and Cadillac boss Graeme Lowdon, contacted Red Bull members to obtain the lowdown on Perez’s troubles.
“We spent a lot of time looking at past experience and kind of what the state of the world was at Sauber, and how Valtteri performed with the car that’s there,” Towriss explained. “Plus kind of qualifying performance versus race performance.
“Then, in particular, probably a more complicated scenario was Red Bull, right? That’s been an interesting kind of saga to watch.
“A team that’s really built around one driver, but has two, and clearly none of the other drivers have fared well in that second seat, from that standpoint.
“So we did take a lot of time to talk to people at Red Bull and get information and feedback.
“The process was lengthy and thorough from that standpoint. And again, what that means is, having looked through all that, we feel very good about Checo, his desire to be in F1, to make a statement, to show the performance that he has, and put that last season or so from Red Bull in the rear view mirror.”
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