Cadillac Formula 1 team principal Graeme Lowdon has hailed the team's decision to opt for an experienced driver line-up as he praised Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez's instant and "super accurate" feedback during testing.
The American outfit will line up at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix as the championship's 11th team. With the team starting from scratch, it chose to sign former Red Bull driver Perez and former Sauber driver Bottas, who made their respective F1 debuts in 2011 and 2013.
"It definitely complements because the great thing is we're getting accurate feedback straight away," Lowdon explained to the media during the first week of pre-season testing in Bahrain.
"These guys are so experienced with multiple different teams, working with multiple different engineers and different cars, different power units, different chassis. And yes, I know the '26 car is very different, but when a driver's giving you feedback in particular about handling and everything else, we're not wasting any time at all."
He added: "We're getting super accurate, thoughtful, and valuable feedback straight away. That was fundamentally what we were looking at. Quick as well, we've had a few little bits and bobs where the run plans have had to be squeezed, and there's some FIA tests, and you don't get a lot of time to do stuff.
Graeme Lowdon, Team Principal of Cadillac Formula 1 Team
"We haven't actually done any real performance runs yet, but you saw yesterday that Valtteri went out on some C3s and only had one lap, because of the red flag procedures and stuff like that, but he was immediately able to switch it on. It's what you want from a Formula 1 driver, super accurate feedback mixed with fast, really, really fast. We're really happy from that point of view."
The second three-day block of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit begins tomorrow, 18 February, and runs until 20 February.
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