Up Next
Formula 1 accepting Cadillac onto the grid 2026 might just provide the career lifeline a spurned Valtteri Bottas needs.
Earlier this month Sauber revealed it was dropping Bottas for Formula 2 points leader Gabriel Bortoleto, leaving no option but for Bottas to spend (at least) 2025 on the sidelines.
That would essentially have meant Bottas waiting on the outside for someone on the grid to slip up.
He'd be hoping for a reversal of the young driver-prompted 2025 removal of experienced midfield drivers such as himself and Kevin Magnussen. Bottas would likely need a young driver to falter and for that driver's team to swing back towards trusted experience.
It would leave ever returning to F1 outside of Bottas's hands, but now that Cadillac has a place on the 2026 grid Bottas has a much clearer route back to racing in F1.
Why it makes sense for Cadillac
Prior to Andretti Cadillac metamorphosing into a far less-Andretti-led Cadillac F1 team, IndyCar race winner Colton Herta was Michael Andretti's favoured option as Andretti's first F1 driver.
It remains to be seen whether that's changed now that Andretti's stepped back from the day-to-day running of the team - a move that's seemingly been crucial to F1's U-turn - but Dan Towriss, who's been handed the reins at Andretti, is reported to be a big fan of Herta too.
Regardless of whether Herta is still a preferred option and whether he can get enough points to qualify for a superlicence, you'd expect having at least one experienced driver to spearhead the team to be a priority for any new team.
F1's most recent new team Haas benefitted greatly from the four-and-a-half seasons' worth of F1 experience brought by Romain Grosjean in 2016.
He finished a remarkable fifth and sixth in Haas's first two weekends, a points windfall that outscored what Renault, Sauber and Manor earned the rest of the year combined.
It would have been tricky for a rookie to help the team hit the ground running that quickly and it could (and should) be a lesson Cadillac heeds.
Bottas would be that perfect experienced option. He has 10 race wins under his belt and experience of the way three different teams work, including knowledge of Mercedes' all-conquering hybrid era behemoth.
He's still been performing well in 2024, comprehensively outfinishing team-mate Zhou Guanyu and occasionally dragging a recalcitrant Sauber out of Q1.
Sauber dropping Bottas wasn't proof that he's past his prime but a reflection of Sauber already having 37-year-old Nico Hulkenberg locked in on a three-year deal and an exciting young driver in Bortoleto on the table.
Probably in any other driver market, Bottas would still have his seat but the long, drawn-out domino effect from Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari move has left him as the rather unlucky biggest scalp.
What about other experienced drivers?
Magnussen's late-season breakthrough probably makes him more of an attractive free agent than he would have been a few months ago but Bottas has been a more consistent performer across his F1 career than Magnussen.
Daniel Ricciardo's 2024 peaks were impressive but he was far too inconsistent to convince Red Bull to promote him to its senior team.
His rather brutal late-season axing gave the impression his time in F1 is done even if Cadillac wanted him. He made it clear after his McLaren exit at the end of 2022 that he'd only return if there was frontrunning machinery available. Cadillac's highly unlikely to offer anything close to that in 2026.
As for the drivers on the 2025 grid but without a contract for 2026, George Russell is the most high profile but you'd imagine he'll have little interest in joining a start-up F1 team anytime soon.
You could make an argument for Sergio Perez if he's dropped by Red Bull. But there's no guarantee he'll have the hunger to swap one of F1's fastest cars for what's likely to be one of F1's slowest.
With seemingly no future at Red Bull's senior team, Yuki Tsunoda could be an option. But the same reasons Red Bull overlooks him for promotion could also detract Cadillac from signing him.
So Bottas is the safest available bet. And he has an additional benefit over Tsunoda (and maybe Perez).
That's because if Cadillac is proactive it could secure Bottas's services for 2025 too.
He's already admitted there's no time to sort a full-time top-line racing programme for 2025, so Cadillac could get Bottas bedded into its team throughout 2025.
It just needs to act quickly before it loses him to a Mercedes reunion that's looking increasingly likely. But perhaps there's a split programme compromise to be found there.
It would be worth it because few new F1 teams have the luxury of getting full use of a multiple-race winner the year before it starts racing in F1.
Plus, he'll still 'only' be 36 by the time Cadillac should get onto the grid so there are potentially years of use it could get from Bottas.
Why should Bottas bother?
You might wonder whether Bottas would want to return with a totally new F1 team that's facing a huge uphill battle to be competitive by 2026. It doesn't have the same Ferrari B-team 'trick' that helped Haas be instantly on the pace of F1’s midfield in 2016, even if it's likely to take Ferrari engines and potentially more customer parts.
The field spread is narrower than it has been for a long time, leaving very few scraps for any team that's even slightly off the back of the midfield.
Bottas knows that all too well, as he's on course to finish 23rd in a 20-driver championship and Sauber may well be F1's first point-less team since Haas strategically wrote off 2021.
But Bottas would have still stuck around at Sauber if he could have done so. He was waiting to sign up for another year of exactly that because he wanted to extend his F1 career and saw the longer-term potential in the soon-to-be-Audi works team.
By joining Cadillac, Bottas can be a building block of a different automotive giant's F1 future. One that might value him more than Audi seems to have in 2024.
Rejoining Mercedes as a third driver might have a sentimental feeling to it but that's never going to lead to a race drive there.
He'd probably go into Cadillac expecting points finishes to be difficult but there's a certain pride still to be had in laying the foundations for the future success of a team, even if you're not around to race the better cars. Think David Coulthard helping Red Bull get into title-winning shape (and getting a couple of podiums along the way while doing so).
That wouldn't be a half-bad, unexpected epilogue for an F1 driver with plenty more to give to an emerging team with plenty to learn.
