With Sergio Perez said to be in advanced talks with Cadillac, the big question remaining is who could take the second seat alongside the former Red Bull driver when the new American team arrives on the grid next season?

Juan Pablo Montoya says he’d “bet you money” it will be Ferrari reserve driver Zhou Guanyu.

Who will line up for Cadillac in their debut F1 campaign?

Confirmation that Cadillac is officially joining the F1 grid in 2026 has come with a flurry of rumours regarding the potential drivers who might represent the team, with names like Perez, Valtteri Bottas, and IndyCar star Colton Herta emerging as key contenders.

Mario Andretti, the 1978 World Champion acting as an adviser to Cadillac F1, has all but given Perez his backing for the one seat.

Appearing on the ESPN Racing podcast, Andretti said: “He is an option. He could be an option. Of course he could be an option. All I can say is that Liam Lawson is making Checo look very, very good.”

According to the Times, Perez is in ‘advanced talks’ to join the American outfit for next season.

The British newspaper claims that talks between Perez and Cadillac F1 are ‘progressing well’, but a contract has yet to be signed with ‘financial details’ still to be ‘ironed out’.

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But while Montoya reckons Perez is a shoe-in to join Cadillac, he’d bet that Ferrari reserve driver Zhou pips Bottas and Herta to the second seat.

Last season Zhou lost his Sauber race-seat as the soon-to-be-Audi squad opted for a complete overhaul of their line-up with the Chinese driver and Bottas both dropped in favour of signing Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto.

But while Bottas returned to Mercedes, the team with whom he won 10 Grands Prix and twice finished runner-up in the Drivers’ Championship, Zhou joined Ferrari as their official reserve driver.

And given that Cadillac will use Ferrari power units for the first three years of their Formula 1 journey before General Motors joins the circus as an engine supplier in 2029, that could give him the advantage in the race for the second Cadillac seat.

“I think Sergio Perez would be a great fit for Cadillac, and I bet you money the next guy might be Zhou Guanyu,” Montoya told Instant Casino.

“They would be a perfect fit. Guanyu is the Ferrari reserve. So, he’ll be driving, developing and working. He’ll know everything about Ferrari, and they’re going with a Ferrari engine.

“So, if you look at it from that point of view, it would make sense.”

The former F1 driver also warned Cadillac against putting Herta in the car as he feels it would be too steep of a learning curve going from IndyCar to F1 for the American driver.

“People say Cadillac should get an American,” Montoya said. “I think it would be crazy if Colton Herta decided to come to F1.

“I don’t think it would be as easy as he thinks.

“For speed, I think Herta has enough speed and be good enough speed-wise to do it. But understanding going from IndyCar to this is such a different change.

“The shock alone of moving to Europe and a different culture would be so big that I think it would screw with his head. If he did do it, the chances of surviving and prospering in it would be very slim.”

Cadillac though may have already come to that conclusion themselves with Andretti revealing they have whittled their options down to three, potentially Perez, Bottas and Zhou, although he did confirm the names of the trio.

“I wish I could tell you,” he said, “but this is something we’re keeping secret ourselves because we don’t want to get our hopes up in some areas where it might not happen.

“So I think it’s very important that we keep this between us until a final decision is made.

“There’s a lot of [drivers] in the US, but because of licensing and everything else there’s definitely not too many options [for an American driver].

“But the second driver, the second seat, will definitely be an experienced driver that could be available.

“And we all know that the selection in that sense is pretty clear.

“There could be three drivers to choose from. Three drivers, realistically, to choose from. And I’m not going to tell you which ones.”

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