(Motorsport-Total.com) – Cadillac has hit rock bottom again after the Formula 1 race in Hungary. For a long time, the newcomer at least had Aston Martin under control, but their upgrade catapulted the team a good deal forward and left Cadillac back at the end of the field.
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It therefore looks like a difficult second half of the season for the Americans. According to Valtteri Bottas, there should still be improvements in the upcoming races, but these are “no miracles” and “nothing huge.” And at some point, Cadillac must also focus on building the new car for 2027.
“That means we can still make progress, but big steps are harder to take because I think everyone is still bringing their last upgrades,” said the Finn.
It is therefore to be expected that Cadillac will continue to fight at every race not to be in the last starting row – and most of the time they will probably lose the fight. That does not satisfy someone like Sergio Perez, who came to the new Formula 1 project with different ambitions.
Perez: We need to rethink our processes
The Mexican puts his finger on the wound: “It has been very difficult for us to do development work. I think we basically haven’t developed enough,” he says. “We obviously need to rethink all our processes to ensure that we are able to develop much more strongly.”
“Because in Formula 1, everything revolves around development, and I think that’s what we are a bit lacking. As a new team, of course, we haven’t developed as much as we would have liked.”
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According to him, there is also a bit of “inefficiency” because much is done through third parties and Cadillac therefore cannot control many things themselves. And: “At the moment, we have not established a clear process,” he criticizes.
“Many of the established teams know their development process. They have a very clear line on how they approach things in both directions. For us, there are still many learning curves that we have yet to figure out and where we try to get the best out of it. We need to strengthen this line, then it will get much better.”
Bottas: What we developed worked
Bottas, on the other hand, does not want to see the problem so negatively. He rates the development this season so far positively. “Everything we brought to the car made it faster,” he praises. That they were able to distance themselves from Aston Martin as long as they had not yet developed their car is proof for him. “That came through the small improvements,” said the Finn.
For him, that is promising for the future, because: “In Formula 1, there is no guarantee that the parts you put on the car actually work.” But Cadillac has made steps, even if they were not as big as the drivers might have hoped.
The Finn is also aware that it is difficult for a newcomer to get closer to the other teams: “There are teams here that have been around forever and know how to develop a car,” he says. “It is almost a guarantee that they find something in the wind tunnel every month, and to compete against that as a new team and do better than them is hard.”
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Nevertheless, the scope for Cadillac is of course still greater than for other racing teams. While these eventually push towards the limit, the Americans can still take bigger steps because many areas are not yet optimized – also independent of new parts.
“For some things we need upgrades, for others not,” emphasizes Perez. “For example, regarding our race performance, we understand exactly where we are lacking with the tires. That is something the team is working very hard on to get there.”
The big problem with the tires
Because that is noticeable with Cadillac: While in qualifying they are mostly within striking distance of Haas or Williams, they fall off significantly in the race.
According to Bottas, this is mainly due to two things: “First, we lack quite a bit of downforce in fast corners,” he says. “In qualifying over one lap, you can somehow mask that. But in the race, lap after lap, that is exactly what damages the tires the most. And if you slide more than the others, you get punished.”
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The second problem is the tire temperatures. “It looks like we overheat the tires more, but here too these things are somewhat connected to the lack of downforce at high speed. So if we can tackle that first, that will be a decent step, and I think that explains why we can be a bit closer over one lap.”
If Cadillac can get this problem under control, a good chunk of lap time is within reach. “I think that is an area where we are lacking and where the team will focus the most to try to bring faster performance,” says Perez.
Improvements still this year?
“We are working on it,” he promises. “The good thing is that we have many experienced people on the team, so we know exactly what to do. Regarding the tires, we have gotten the maximum out of our weekends, but it is very important for us to get some upgrades.”
“We are pushing hard to lower the tire temperature. Of course, I can’t reveal too many details, but that is something we are working on intensively,” says the Mexican.
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That could also happen this year, even though Cadillac has started to shift resources to the coming year. “It’s a bit of a balancing act, but still I think no one on the team is satisfied with our current position,” says Perez.
“So I assume the team will continue to push so that a few more upgrades come to ensure that we can at least prove to ourselves that our development process is strong. That will give us a lot of confidence for the future.”
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