Sergio Perez confirmed for Ferrari drive after signing F1 comeback deal | F1 | Sport
Sergio Perez has confirmed that he will drive Ferrari’s 2023 challenger, the SF-23, at Imola next month as part of a two-day test for his new squad, Cadillac. F1’s latest addition to the grid does not yet have its own old machinery to run in TPC outings, and so is using power unit supplier Ferrari’s.
Perez signed a contract to return to the grid with Cadillac in 2026, where he will partner former Williams, Mercedes and Sauber star Valtteri Bottas. However, in an unusual move, the Mexican will drive another team’s machinery before the end of the current campaign.
“As much as I train, I need to have time, kilometres in the car, because in the end, they are very specific exercises and muscles that you train in the car,” Perez told fans at a football match ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix.
“I’m going to have two days in Imola, which is going to help me a lot. But we’re doing well. They’ll be very useful because we’ll be able to work with the mechanics and engineers to have the whole team ready for the testing program that begins in January – very early in the year – where we’ll already be at 100 per cent.”
The Mexican then confirmed that he would be driving the 2023 Ferrari at the private test in Emilia-Romagna. Interestingly, team principal Graeme Lowdon confirmed ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix that their planned tests have an unusual goal.
As Cadillac are a new team built from the ground up, the Silverstone-based squad have no experience working as a unit on race weekends. They have completed simulations and mock runs from their own base, and this test is the next step on that ladder.
“We’ve been looking at the testing a team can do under the TPC rules,” Lowdon explained in Singapore. “We don’t have a previous car, but also the title is a slight misnomer, because we don’t actually need to test a car, so it doesn’t really matter.
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“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.
“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 pit lane are having every day, working with each car.”
