Cadillac to poach rival team's car ahead of F1 debut

Cadillac F1 team will have to poach one of their rivals' cars ahead of the 2026 season in which the team will make their debut.

The American-owned outfit will take to the grid for the first time at the 2026 Australian Grand Prix, becoming the 11th team in F1.

Earlier this week, they confirmed that both Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas have been signed to their ranks as their driver lineup as they craved experience for their first forays into the sport.

Cadillac have also confirmed that they will be using Ferrari power units for their first two seasons in the sport, before they start producing their own in partnership with General Motors.

With new regulations sweeping into F1 for 2026, the team will be desperate to gather as much data as possible from their new state-of-the-art facility, and from testing days that will help Bottas and Perez get back up to speed.

The team will have to use a rival's car for the latter, however, with no previous models available for them to complete testing of previous cars (TPC) laps.

The TPC programme allows teams to use cars from between 2022-2024 during testing days at their private tracks, and Cadillac will have to use one of their rival's cars in order to be able to complete this, with them not having a car available to them until pre-season testing in January.

It's thought that the most likely solution to this would be to use a Ferrari, with the two teams set to enter a partnership together, and the previous Ferrari cars allowing the team to use a Ferrari power unit as will be the case in 2026.

Cadillac prepare for debut

Due to Bottas' current role as a Mercedes reserve driver, it will mainly be Perez making use of the TPC programme ahead of 2026.

Both Bottas and Perez were axed by their teams at the end of the 2024 season, so have spent a full year without a full-time racing seat.

Cadillac team principal Graeme Lowdon told The Race about his team's preparations for 2026: "We don’t have a TPC car or a current car that we can operate, but we are already simulating race events.

"The next one that we're doing is Monza, and we simulate it as if it is a complete race, from start to finish with full integration of everybody in the team from Thursday all the way through to Sunday.

"We’ve got a very clear plan in our build-up to Melbourne next year and it doesn't involve just simulating races, which is really, really important."

He continued: "We’ll be introducing car testing as well this year. Obviously, we have to work with others to be able to do that, but that's perfectly allowable under the regulations.

"We just have a plan to steadily build up so that when we get to Melbourne, we hit the ground running, and the drivers themselves play such an important part in it. And the one thing I can tell you, just spending time with them is, I don't want to put words in their mouths, but there's a huge amount of enthusiasm to get going."

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