Cadillac's journey to the 2026 Formula 1 grid has reached another milestone with its first in-person track outing as regular driver Sergio Perez took the wheel of a Ferrari SF-23 at Imola.
Cadillac, which will become F1's 11th team next year, has been conducting simulation work with its development drivers for a long time, and has recently been able to feed 2026 racer Perez into its workflow.
But by not having a current regulation car, the team has largely been stuck in the virtual world so far. That has now changed as the team concluded a deal with its power unit supplier Ferrari to loan a two-year-old Ferrari SF-23, which satisfies F1's Testing of a Previous Car regulations.
On Wednesday, 30 Ferrari team members assisted around 20 Cadillac members as they moved into pitboxes 16 and 17 at Imola. Mexican F1 veteran Perez will run the car, which runs in a naked carbon fibre livery, for two days. The 2023 machine was first given a shakedown by Ferrari test driver Arthur Leclerc at Fiorano on Tuesday.
Speaking exclusively to Autosport at the recent Singapore Grand Prix, Cadillac team principal Graeme Lowdon said the objective of the Ferrari loan was mainly to give his team a first opportunity to start working together in a real trackside environment and give the squad hands-on operational practice with a current spec F1 car to drill procedures.
"Actually, current team testing is kind of what we're interested in. We want to use a car, because in all of the simulations that we mentioned, we try and make it as real to life as possible," Lowdon said.
"I think everyone gets a little bit wrongly concerned, that in some way we can get an advantage by testing someone else's car or something. But we're not testing the car, we're testing the people.
"Yes, we are looking to gain the advantage, but not from anything to do with the car. The advantages that we want is for our mechanics to have the same experience that all the mechanics in this pitlane are having every day working with each car."
He added: "You have to get the mechanics used to that muscle memory of operating an F1 car. You have to be able to stick tyre blankets on, and then there's just the size of a car and the heat that comes off one, and the presence that they have."
Perez's 2026 colleague Valtteri Bottas will have to wait longer to start his Cadillac role, with the Finn still tied to Mercedes as its reserve driver until the end of the 2025 season.
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