Cadillac’s journey to the 2026 Components 1 grid has reached one other milestone with its first in-person monitor outing as common driver Sergio Perez took the wheel of a Ferrari SF-23 at Imola.
Cadillac, which can grow to be F1’s eleventh crew subsequent 12 months, has been conducting simulation work with its growth drivers for a very long time, and has lately been in a position to feed 2026 racer Perez into its workflow.
However by not having a present regulation automotive, the crew has largely been caught within the digital world up to now. That has now modified because the crew concluded a cope with its energy unit provider Ferrari to mortgage a two-year-old Ferrari SF-23, which satisfies F1’s Testing of a Earlier Automobile rules.
On Wednesday, 30 Ferrari crew members assisted round 20 Cadillac members as they moved into pitboxes 16 and 17 at Imola. Mexican F1 veteran Perez will run the automotive, which runs in a unadorned carbon fibre livery, for 2 days. The 2023 machine was first given a shakedown by Ferrari check driver Arthur Leclerc at Fiorano on Tuesday.
Talking completely to Autosport on the current Singapore Grand Prix, Cadillac crew principal Graeme Lowdon stated the target of the Ferrari mortgage was primarily to present his crew a primary alternative to start out working collectively in an actual trackside atmosphere and provides the squad hands-on operational observe with a present spec F1 automotive to drill procedures.
The primary picture of Sergio Perez driving a Ferrari SF-23 operated by Cadillac at Imola
Photograph by: Jacopo Rava
“Really, present crew testing is type of what we’re excited about. We need to use a automotive, as a result of in the entire simulations that we talked about, we attempt to make it as actual to life as doable,” Lowdon stated.
“I believe everybody will get a little bit bit wrongly involved, that not directly we will get a bonus by testing another person’s automotive or one thing. However we’re not testing the automotive, we’re testing the folks.
“Sure, we need to acquire the benefit, however not from something to do with the automotive. The benefits that we would like is for our mechanics to have the identical expertise that each one the mechanics on this pitlane are having on daily basis working with every automotive.”
He added: “It’s a must to get the mechanics used to that muscle reminiscence of working an F1 automotive. You will have to have the ability to stick tyre blankets on, after which there’s simply the scale of a automotive and the warmth that comes off one, and the presence that they’ve.”
Perez’s 2026 colleague Valtteri Bottas must wait longer to start out his Cadillac position, with the Finn nonetheless tied to Mercedes as its reserve driver till the top of the 2025 season.
Sergio Perez, Cadillac Racing
Photograph by: Jacopo Rava
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