Hello, welcome to the Ringer F1 show, part of the Ringer podcast network. I am your host,

Megan Schuster, and we are here today with a special summer break episode, our last summer break episode,

because F1 is back this Sunday. Today we're going to be digging into each team's situation

going into 2026 and rating them on a scale of 1 to 10. This will be factoring in all things

driver lineup, team leadership, expected car performance, a whole host of other components.

And joining me to do that is the athletics, Luke, thank you so much for joining.

Thank you very much for having me on again. It's so, yeah, good to be here.

Yeah. Before we dive into the team ratings bit of our conversation, we got some news today,

and that is that Cadillac F1 has announced this driver lineup for 2026. It will be Sergio

Paris and Valtari Botas.

This move has seemed to be telegraphed for a little bit now. There were plenty of rumors that both

drivers were in the mix for a seat. But from an outside perspective, it kind of makes a lot of sense,

I think. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this, of course, too, but these are two very

veteran drivers who have 527 F1 race starts and 16 wins between them. Cadillac team CEO,

Dan Towers, said today that the experience is why both of those drivers were chosen for this

endeavor. That'll be obviously very critical for a new

team that is figuring out how things work in F1, that is collectively building a car for the first

time and that will need a lot of feedback from drivers on the grid about what's working and

probably most importantly, what isn't. Luke, from your perspective, how did this move come to be?

And I think you might have gotten a little insight from the drivers themselves today, too, from your perspective, how did this move come to be? And I think you might have gotten

a little insight from the drivers themselves today, too, about how they're feeling about this

signing. Yeah, yeah. It's been good to chat to Checo and Valtteri today and kind of get

...