There is something quietly fascinating about watching Sergio Perez in 2026. The Mexican driver spent four years at Red Bull as Max Verstappen’s support act, won six Grands Prix, and finished second in the drivers’ championship in 2023. Then came an ending that felt abrupt even by Formula 1’s unforgiving standards: axed at the end of 2024 after a season of underperformance, replaced before the ink on his extension contract had dried.
What followed was not retirement. It was Cadillac.
Perez returned to the grid after a year away, joining the new Cadillac Formula 1 team alongside Valtteri Bottas for their debut season in 2026, having been axed by Red Bull at the end of a disappointing 2024 campaign just months after signing a contract extension. For a driver of his calibre, a year on the sidelines serving as Red Bull’s reserve while watching Isack Hadjar take his seat was not the conclusion anyone had scripted.
The early races at Cadillac have been a learning experience rather than a statement. Bottas and Perez brought an unmatched blend of experience, leadership and technical understanding to a team still finding its competitive baseline. Points have been rare. But the broader context matters. Cadillac is not yet a car that should be scoring regularly. It is a car being built to score regularly in two or three seasons.
Perez’s value to Cadillac is not purely in the results column. He has built power units and aerodynamic packages from a driver’s perspective at one of the most technically demanding organisations in the sport. That knowledge, feeding back into a new team’s development cycle, is significant in ways that do not show up in the Sunday classification.
The question of a genuine competitive comeback hinges on how quickly Cadillac can close the gap to the midfield. If they do it by 2027 or 2028, Perez will be in his late thirties and the window may have narrowed. But he is racing again, which is more than many expected.
In Formula 1, the comeback is never fully impossible. Perez, more than most, knows that.