Cadillac's first grand prix season was always going to be a slow burn. Three races in, the American works team's Japanese Grand Prix weekend gave an honest snapshot of where that project actually sits: a project where Sergio Perez has quietly become the stabilising driver, and where Valtteri Bottas is still fighting new-team software gremlins that keep interrupting his race.
The headline numbers from Suzuka are generous to Perez. P1 pundits Matt and Tommy both rated the Mexican 7/10 for his Sunday drive, highlighting the 45-second gap he put on teammate Bottas as evidence he was the only Cadillac driver extracting anywhere near the car's current ceiling. Tommy went a step further, describing Perez as 'the better Cadillac driver' at a weekend where maximising a difficult package was the only realistic objective.
That reading has to be balanced against the Friday the team had. F1 Yapathon's Japan recap was less generous to Perez after a messy FP1 in which he was flagged for impeding other cars before crashing on a different lap. The pundit's verdict on that Friday session was harsh, calling it a case of the Mexican 'not beating the washed allegations,' but even that framing acknowledged the Sunday turnaround was notable given how poorly the weekend had started.
Bottas's weekend told the opposite story. The Finn was audibly frustrated on team radio at Suzuka when his anti-stall system repeatedly activated on downshifts. "Okay, but it's not good," Bottas told his engineers. "I mean, I've just got anti-stall on both times I got down a gear." The engineers had reportedly told him the car looked fine from the pit wall; Bottas's radio reply is a reminder that the driver in the seat often has a clearer early warning of a software issue than the telemetry does.
Bottas has generally been positive about the Cadillac project in his other media appearances. Speaking to Sky in Australia the weekend before, the Finn described his new environment in enthusiastic terms. "I've never been part of designing a steering wheel layout or choosing the exact buttons for the wheels, or choosing the steering ratio," he said. "New teams don't carry past habits and allow drivers more input in car design." He also played down the usual new-team internal politics, saying there were "no number ones and no number twos" in the Cadillac garage, even if the current pace deficit means one car is simply faster each weekend.
His optimism on the trajectory is equally direct. "It should be, and I think it will be," Bottas said of Cadillac's development rate. "We've already come a long way from the first shakedown. It's going to be pretty rapid improvement from here." That ambition is what makes Japan's anti-stall struggles a frustrating data point rather than an existential one; new teams should be producing exactly these kinds of early-season software problems, but they need to be caught and eliminated fast.
The reality of Cadillac's 2026 campaign, as laid out by F1Unchained's early-season review, is that the car is 'still pretty far from the rest' even if the raw progression is there. At Melbourne, Cadillac finished behind Aston Martin; by Japan, Perez was 30 seconds clear of Fernando Alonso on the road. That is a team making week-on-week gains, even if it is from a low base.
If Cadillac's 2026 is remembered as a transition year, the narrative could easily be that Perez salvaged the early races as the more experienced driver while Bottas absorbed the bulk of the team's software teething issues. Japan was the weekend that started to write that story.
Source: youtube.com