Can Cadillac learn something from Red Bull’s early F1 driver line-ups?

Cadillac's announcement of Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as its Formula 1 drivers had been hanging in the air for several weeks but became official on Tuesday.

This means General Motors' F1 project is taking shape: the drivers are known, so are the three home bases (the team will operate from Fishers, Charlotte and Silverstone across the United States and United Kingdom), and Graeme Lowdon is pulling the strings as team boss.

On the latter, TWG Motorsports – which along with General Motors is running the Cadillac F1 team – has revealed that there will be no change in the foreseeable future. Christian Horner's name was being mentioned, but at the presentation of Bottas and Pérez, TWG Motorsports boss Dan Towriss announced that he was happy to quash that rumour.

Towriss expressed confidence in Lowdon and added that Cadillac was currently not interested in capturing Horner. In a way, that is also explainable, as Horner would probably aspire to shares and the Cadillac team is largely closed off in terms of financial structure – at least for now – with GM and TWG.

How Coulthard used his experience and contacts at Red Bull

David Coulthard seen at Red Bull Showrun in Prague

That said, Horner did, of course, co-found the Red Bull F1 team. That formation was not a new entry like Cadillac, but took over an existing team with Jaguar. However, it was a team in decline, making the challenge then almost as great as it is currently at Cadillac.

Not surprisingly, David Coulthard previously told this website that he and his manager Martin Brundle saw nothing at all in a move to Jaguar, despite the Scot having to leave McLaren after the 2004 season: "I decided I would not sign for Jaguar. I would rather quit Formula 1 than sign with them."

With the arrival of Red Bull and especially the vision of Dietrich Mateschitz, Coulthard changed tack, although it must be said that the driver line-up with DC, Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi was perhaps not the most appealing on the grid at the time. Here you can immediately find a similarity, but also a difference, with Cadillac.

Like Red Bull back then, Cadillac is now going for an experienced driver with the baggage of a top team in his backpack. For Coulthard, that was true about McLaren at the time, and also for Bottas and Perez at Mercedes and Red Bull. All these drivers know what it takes to drive for a top team, and therefore what it takes behind the scenes to get there.

Red Bull bet on two of its own junior drivers for the second seat. Klien had already been allowed to drive at Jaguar for a year and was 22 at the time; Liuzzi (who would drive only four Grands Prix in 2005) was 24 at the start of that season.

It marks a difference with Cadillac, which for the time being has ignored rookies, although the philosophy is more important. Just before his Red Bull resignation, for instance, Horner revealed that he had been given a clear message by Mateschitz regarding driver selection in the team's build-up phase.

"I clearly remember Dietrich Mateschitz saying to me 'we don't need the best driver if we don't yet have the best car'. In that first phase, it was all about building the team." In other words, recruit an extremely expensive and blisteringly fast driver can't be a top priority if the car and the rest of the project are not yet at that level, regardless of the fact that you cannot get a star driver right away anyway. It was true for Red Bull then and it is certainly true for Cadillac now.

In the first phase, it is more important to have drivers who can contribute to building the team, as Coulthard did to a large extent at Red Bull – especially as he attracted top designer Adrian Newey. "David worked even faster than Tinder these days! The match was a reality in no time," Horner laughed in retrospect. "David set up a secret dinner at Bluebird in London with Adrian and his wife – because women ultimately make all the decisions – and that's how we got to know each other."

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Coulthard's experience at McLaren came in handy. "I had worked with Adrian since I was a test driver for Williams – at the time I was in my early twenties. Then, of course, I also worked with him at McLaren."

Newey's qualities were widely known in the paddock, but that does not take away from the fact that such contacts and mutual ties are important in attracting the right people - with Mateschitz's mandate in the background.

"Dietrich didn't always say 'yes' when I suggested something, of course not, because that's part of the game. But the things you really believed in and that were really important – not based on a PowerPoint, but based on pure passion and the belief that someone could change the team – then nine times out of 10 he said 'OK, go for it'," Coulthard recalls.

The important difference from a rookie

David Coulthard, Red Bull Racing RB1

Perez and Bottas won't be able to snare big names like Newey right away, for sure, but their experience and contacts in the paddock can help build a new team. The overall picture highlights that in the initial phase, it is about more than just track performance.

Indeed, the difference during that build-up phase is also made in laying a good foundation for the future and attracting the right people. In that respect, an experienced driver can contribute in three possible ways: technical feedback in the development of a car, contacts in the paddock to get people excited about Cadillac and, finally, a look behind the scenes at top teams like Mercedes and Red Bull, giving them key knowledge to improve the team in the long run.

It marks an important difference from rookies. Several drivers – including Max Verstappen – have revealed, looking back on their debut season, how different F1 is: considerably more travelling, more media commitments, more engineers than in the junior classes and, of course, a lot more pressure.

These are all things to get used to, which usually means rookies already have their hands full with themselves and can't look at the bigger picture as much in their first year. For Bottas and Perez, all these facets – despite reservations about their pure speed – are cut and dried, allowing the focus to be on building the team. So Cadillac's driver line-up may not be the most appealing, but it certainly makes sense.

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