Perez defused Cadillac's doubts "with flying colors" - Towriss

Cadillac had questions regarding Sergio Perez’s motivation following the disappointing end to his time at Red Bull, but were fully convinced to sign him after meetings with the six-time race winner.

Perez signed a two-year contract extension at Red Bull last summer but was then dropped at the end of 2024 after scoring just 33 points in the final 13 rounds. The Mexican was left without a seat for this season but has been signed by Cadillac for its debut season alongside Valtteri Bottas, and Cadillac F1 Team and TWG Motorsports CEO Dan Towriss says the team addressed Perez’s departure from Red Bull during talks.

“Certainly there was a lot of conversation around the gap, having been out for a full year,” Towriss said. “I think when you look at Valtteri, he's at the track every weekend, right? And so it was important for us to kind of know where Sergio's at in terms of his desire to be back in Formula 1, and also his belief in our project in leading the Cadillac Formula 1 Team. And we couldn't have been more pleased with his response.

“I think, again, in our meetings with him, he outperformed, I guess. If you would say we had questions, we had skepticism around some of these things and he answered all of our questions, passed our tests with flying colors. And so we were pleased to put him forward.”

The poor run of form for Perez came while teammate Max Verstappen won the drivers’ championship, but the subsequent struggles for both Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda at Red Bull also played a part in Cadillac’s thinking as it looked beyond each driver’s results.

“We spent a lot of time looking at past experience and kind of what the state of the world was at Sauber, and really how Valtteri performed with the car that's there and kind of qualifying performance versus race performance,” Towriss added.

“And then in particular, probably the 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, I think what that means is having looked through all that, we feel very good about Checo, his desire to be in Formula 1, to make a statement, to show the performance that he has and kind of put that last season or so from Red Bull in the rear view mirror.”