Formula 1's newest team is lacking tremendously in its debut season — but not in the area most people expected. Cadillac arrived in 2026 braced to be last, and possibly last by some margin. Instead, the bigger frustration inside the garage is operational, and the man voicing it loudest is Sergio Perez.
The headline numbers are unflattering. Cadillac has yet to score a point or drag a car out of the first part of qualifying at either a sprint or a main Grand Prix. Yet the underlying pace has been a pleasant surprise. The team has spent most weekends scrapping with the big-spending but underachieving Aston Martin to avoid last place, and has even begun to irritate established midfielders.
Where Perez has run out of patience is elsewhere. After establishing himself as Cadillac's lead driver over Valtteri Bottas, the Mexican retired from arguably the team's most competitive race so far in Canada with a freak suspension failure that owed nothing to contact. For Perez, it was proof of how much execution still has to improve.
"We are not maximizing the results," he said, describing a team that is "in a massive hurry" and an operational side that is "lacking tremendously and needs to rapidly improve."
The growing pains are the kind any brand-new constructor faces. Cadillac has had to troubleshoot a low-pressure fuel system that made collecting and pumping fuel difficult — since fixed — while also learning to fit aerodynamic parts cleanly, make rapid garage changes between qualifying runs, and process the enormous volume of live data that rivals have spent years interrogating. Short of historic reference data, the team is constantly playing catch-up over a weekend.
Context matters. As team principal Graeme Lowden likes to point out, the next-newest team on the grid, Haas, has started 219 Grands Prix since arriving in 2016. Cadillac has so far completed just five. Measured against that, the trajectory is genuinely encouraging. A major aerodynamic upgrade introduced for the fourth round in Miami worked well, validating the team's new systems and processes.
The early targets have largely been hit. The first was simply to be fast enough to qualify within the 107 percent rule — a legitimate worry that Cadillac has dismissed emphatically, never coming close to breaching it. On average its faster car has been only 3.176 percent off the quickest Q1 time, and it has out-qualified Aston Martin twice in eight sessions. Reliability, the second target, has held up better than feared: a finish on debut in Australia, three two-car finishes, and an 80 percent finishing rate across the opening five Grands Prix. Remarkably, Cadillac has completed more racing laps this season than Red Bull, Williams, Racing Bulls, Audi, Aston Martin and reigning champion McLaren.
Lowden set two further goals — to earn the respect of rivals and to measure the team's ability to execute. The former has been comfortably achieved. The latter is where the gap remains, and where Perez keeps lighting a fire.
Both Perez and Bottas arrived after a year on the sidelines, hungry to prove they were not finished. So far the move is working out better for Perez, who has grabbed the higher peaks and has been openly demanding more — pushing in meetings, suggesting personnel to chase, and flagging areas that need urgent work. He has said he now feels he is proving himself to be one of the best drivers on the grid.
That hunger comes with a warning for Cadillac. The team is understood to be aware that Perez is already on the radar of other midfield teams weighing their 2027 options. For now he is committed, loyal to the project and determined to be part of its rise rather than merely a foundation for it. But the message is clear: the pace is real, the respect is earned, and now the hardest part — turning promise into points — is the work that lies ahead.
Source: youtube.com