F1 news: Five drivers who could line up for Cadillac on the 2026 F1 grid
F1 finally has its 11th team after a deal was formally approved to allow General Motors to enter its Cadillac brand for the 2026 season on Friday, March 7.
According to Team Principal Graeme Lowdon, Cadillac are now able to have ‘meaningful conversations’ with potential drivers, and teased there could be at least half a dozen contenders for their seats.
Sports News Blitz’s F1 writer Henry Eccles takes a look at five possible candidates to start the 2026 F1 season under the iconic American manufacturer’s name.
Colton Herta
Ever since the joint Cadillac-Andretti bid to join F1 started to gather steam, Colton Herta is a name that has not gone away.
A 24-year-old American IndyCar racer for Andretti Global, Herta has long been touted for an F1 seat.
In 2022, he almost joined Alfa Romeo Sauber amidst a takeover attempt by Andretti Autosport, after outperforming then drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi on the team’s simulator.
Negotiations between Andretti and Sauber broke down at the last minute, and Herta instead signed with McLaren as a development driver, impressing the Woking team in a two-day test in Portimao.
Red Bull also showed an interest in enrolling Herta into their junior program at AlphaTauri (now Racing Bulls) in 2022.
In Indycar, Herta has been able to showcase his talents for Andretti, having become the youngest driver to ever win an Indycar race, and finishing runner-up in 2024 to Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou.
At the end of 2024, Michael Andretti, founder of Andretti Autosport, stepped down as CEO and the Andretti name was dropped from Cadillac’s eventual entry.
Yet his father and legendary F1 driver Mario Andretti retains a seat on the new team’s board, and is a big fan of Herta - citing him as a ‘good bet’ for a Cadillac seat next to an experienced F1 veteran.
On Monday, however, Team Principal Lowdon stressed that while the team’s first driver lineup could contain an American, their driving pairing will ultimately be selected on merit.
And there is still work for Herta to do - the American racer will need a top-four finish in this year’s Indycar championship to obtain the 40 FIA Super License points required to enter F1.
Valtteri Bottas
Although he is currently at Mercedes as a reserve driver, Valtteri Bottas is by no means winding down his F1 career.
In his reserve role, the former Sauber driver will be travelling to every race on the 2025 calendar, hoping to keep his name in conversations around the driver market.
Any team would be lucky to have an experienced driver like Bottas, a 10-time grand prix winner with 67 podiums and 246 races behind him - he was also the subject of interest from both Alpine and Williams before his Mercedes return for 2025.
The Finn has been vocal about his interest in the Cadillac seat too, having known Lowdon for three years at Sauber through his management of Guanyu Zhou, another potential option for Cadillac.
“I’ve known Graeme for a long time,” Bottas told F1. “I will imagine they will need some experience, they have a lot of work to do.
“At this stage of my career, I can still give so much to the sport, building from scratch would be really interesting.”
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Sergio Perez
Another experienced head currently without a seat is Sergio ‘Checo’ Perez, after a difficult end to his Red Bull career.
Perez may have struggled alongside team-mate Max Verstappen, but make no mistake, he is still a brilliant racer.
The former Racing Point driver has competed in 281 races, achieving six wins, 39 podiums and a P2 championship finish (2023) across 14 seasons in F1.
He has also further proven himself particularly as a street circuit specialist with victories in Baku, Singapore, and Monaco.
As well as his pedigree, Perez would bring an almost unrivalled level of marketability to the new Cadillac team, boasting a huge fanbase in both his native Mexico and the US, and with that comes serious financial backing.
On Sunday, Checo’s father Antonio Perez made headlines with bold claims about his son’s future amid rumours linking him with Cadillac, and hinted that a big move is in the offing.
“Sergio [Perez] wants to come back solely to be world champion, that is the only thing missing," he said to ESPN.
“What Sergio is cooking up is something really big for the Mexican fans, they’re going to be very happy, very proud.”
It would appear, then, that Perez and Cadillac are equally matched at least in terms of ambition, with Lowdon emphasising a desire to be as competitive as possible from the very start of the 2026 season.
Yuki Tsunoda
Having been snubbed for a promotion to Red Bull, Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda begins his fifth season at Racing Bulls in 2025.
It is also likely to be his final season for Red Bull’s development team, seeing as his contract expires at the end of the year, leading to uncertainty over his F1 future.
With Japanese manufacturer Honda coming in as an engine provider for Aston Martin in 2026, and historically keen to support Tsunoda’s development in F1, many have speculated that the Racing Bull driver could make the switch to the Silverstone-based team.
Recently, however, the company has begun to distance itself from Tsunoda, with Honda Racing Corporation President Koji Watanabe explaining that ‘drivers can’t rely on Honda forever.’
“There’s not much more we can do for him [Tsunoda],” Wantanabe said to Motorsport.com.
“He needs to solidify his support team, including his manager, and secure the necessary seat. He is a professional, after all.”
Even if Honda really pushed for Tsunoda at Aston Martin, both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll remain contractually locked in for 2026, making any potential move even more difficult.
But Tsunoda has made changes to his management team, and is now being represented by Diego Menchaca, signalling an intention to move out of the Red Bull set up once and for all.
And with options slim elsewhere, Cadillac’s new F1 team currently represents the Japanese star’s best chance of staying in the sport beyond 2025.
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George Russell
Admittedly, this one is pretty wild, but when you delve deeper into the driver market possibilities surrounding Mercedes, a move to Cadillac for George Russell starts to make more sense.
Currently, Mercedes are the only top-four team without a driver pairing signed on for 2026, despite Team Principal Toto Wolff’s assurances that Russell and rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli are the future of the team.
While there are ‘complicated’ options to extend their contracts, Wolff has also spoken about wanting to create a ‘pressure cooker’ environment for his drivers.
In the latest season of Netflix’s Drive to Survive, despite Russell’s impressive displays at Spa and Las Vegas, there is a sense of lingering doubt over his ability to fully lead the team forward in the post-Hamilton era.
And there is another rumour concerning Mercedes that just won’t go away: their interest in Verstappen.
Dutch pundit Jack Plooij told Ziggo Sport that he thinks Cadillac should ‘throw everything’ at Russell based on his seemingly unshakeable belief that Verstappen will line up for Mercedes in 2026.
Max’s father Jos Verstappen branded the prediction as ‘nonsense’ on X, but is known to have a good relationship with Wolff, whom Plooij’s fellow pundit and former driver Renger Van der Zande claims may have recently met with Max in Eindhoven.
Silly season really has come early, but if there is anything to these claims, a potential move for the Dutchman would surely see Russell have to move elsewhere, given that the pair’s frosty relationship shows no signs of thawing.
Cadillac have made no secret of their lofty ambitions in F1, and they would be hard-pressed to find a better driver to match them than Russell, a three-time race winner with five pole positions and 15 podiums at just 27 years old.
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