While Cadillac struggles at the back of the grid, race pace data exposes a massive performance gap between teammates, sparking rumors of driver replacements and surprise transfers.
Cadillac chose Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez as their drivers for their first season as a Formula 1 World Championship team. Although the American team had a surprising start, in the last few race weekends they suffered many problems and were unable to even finish the races.
Both Pérez and Bottas have experienced issues that have prevented them from finishing races and negatively impacted their results. In fact, the Mexican had managed to score the first point in Cadillac's history in Formula 1; however, this was taken away from him after a penalty.
This has already generated numerous rumors surrounding the team and its drivers. Bottas, in particular, has been said to be a possible replacement after Sergio Pérez consistently outperformed him during the first half of the 2026 season.
On the other hand, and in a completely different situation, Pérez has been linked with a possible team change, even though Cadillac was considered to be his last team in F1 before his retirement. However, Williams and Alpine have emerged as potential suitors for the Mexican driver's services.
Who is faster: Checo or Bottas?
Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas are at the bottom of the 2026 Formula 1 World Championship Drivers' Championship and have yet to score any points in the current season of the top category, although the hope is that they will manage to do so in one of the races after the summer break.
However, the difference in performance between the Mexican and the Finn on the track has been clear despite their lack of points and their position in the World Championship. According to DeltaData, an account specializing in compiling accurate F1 statistics, Checo has been 0.640% faster than Bottas in race pace in clean air during the 2026 F1 races.
The gap between the Cadillac drivers is the largest on the grid, even bigger than that between Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, a four-time world champion and a virtually rookie driver who just joined Red Bull Racing, or the triple between Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly, the Alpine drivers.
Therefore, it's no surprise that both drivers are currently in this situation, with one linked to a possible team change and the other rumored to be losing his seat to a younger driver. At this moment, a move to any other team would be an improvement for either Checo or Bottas, although only one of them seems to have that possibility.
