Simonds on Pérez's contribution to the creation of the 2026 car

      On Thursday in Austin a press conference was held with Cadillac team management, at which some details of preparations for the debut season were revealed. In particular, Pat Symonds, who holds the position of executive engineering consultant, spoke about the contribution Sergio Pérez has already made to the creation of the 2026 car.

      Pat Symonds: “Sergio has already worked on our simulator, since he has no commitments to other teams. We conducted a technical briefing with him and asked him to work on the simulator to get the necessary feedback on small details.

      For example, Eric Warrcken’s group is developing the power steering, and after the simulator Sergio told them: ‘Not that — I want a slightly different steering effort.’ And that’s great, because the engineers were able to get straight to work and make it how Sergio wants it.

      The situation with Valtteri is somewhat different, since he has an active contract with Mercedes. By the way, Mercedes helped us a lot by allowing us to involve Valtteri in assessing some aspects, such as his preferences for steering wheel settings and the like.

      A team in our position is lucky to have two experienced drivers, because next season the workload on them will be considerable. Changes in the regulations will make on-track battles more tactical, so it will be impossible to calculate everything in advance. Therefore we need drivers who will make decisions on the spot while also managing tire wear and similar things.”