Cadillac upgrading its F1 car at every race, as Sergio Perez sets timeline for points

March 12, 2026

Cadillac is set to update its Formula 1 car at each of the next few grands prix, Valtteri Bottas has revealed, with Sergio Perez seeking points by the summer break.

The American team made its F1 debut last week at the Australian Grand Prix, but ended up quite far away from the midfield in Melbourne. Setting aside the deeply troubled Aston Martin-Honda squad, Cadillac was 1.4s slower than the next car in qualifying; Perez finished the race in 16th, 56 seconds away from 15th-placed Carlos Sainz and 2m28s down on the last points-scoring position.

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The car’s lack of performance didn’t come as a surprise to its drivers, even with engine supplier Ferrari fighting for victory in Melbourne.

“We anticipated, we knew that,” Perez said. “I mean, this car was done a long time ago. It’s very basic; they had to do it very early, the sign-off. So we knew that the start was always going to be difficult.”

“Ferrari proved that they can race towards the front end, so the power unit is decent,” Bottas pointed out. “And we should get all the help from them as well. We can see which kind of deployment they are using and we can easily just do the same if we want. So I don’t see the deployment as the limitation. It’s definitely our car.

“Especially on the aero side, we’re lacking quite a lot of load, especially on the rear end of the car, which now has kind of boxed us in with this mechanical set-up a little bit, because we just need to do everything we can to protect the rear end. But once we start gaining some more load, then there’s a bit more to come.”

Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac Racing

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

Asked if Cadillac’s car had a fundamental architecture problem or if this was a launch-spec aero package that could be improved upon, the Finn clarified: “I don’t see any big fundamental issues. If you look at the detailing to some other cars, I think the bodywork looks great. But I think it’s more about the finer details that there’s a bigger difference to the top teams. So I don’t think there’s big limitations.

“There’s still been a gap to the cars ahead, now we need to start working on closing that. It’s not an easy task, but there’s a lot in the pipeline for the next races.”

This refers to the upcoming upgrades, which will kickstart Cadillac’s hoped recovery. “I think in the first four or five races we’re always getting something to the track aero-wise, more downforce each race,” Bottas said, presumably assuming the Middle Eastern rounds will take place as planned in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in April.

“So then we see how big a difference that makes. But again, we have now a lot more knowledge about other cars, other cars’ philosophies. So I’m sure they’re pretty flat out at the wind tunnel at this moment.

“There will be performance already coming for the next races, but then the bigger steps we’ve got to figure out how to find.”

Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac Racing

Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images

Perez is keen for Cadillac to ‘reduce that gap race by race’ – “because in Formula 1 there is no time” – and it won’t just be a matter of aero development.

“There are a lot of areas where we will be making big steps in the coming races, operationally and even on strategy,” the Mexican detailed. “I think if we tidy up our race already from Melbourne, there are things that we could have done better. Better calls, better strategy, operationally, better stops as well. Our final stop was very competitive.”

Perez spent 18.951s in the pitlane then, which is 1.3s slower than the benchmarks set by McLaren and Ferrari in 17.649s and 17.664s respectively. All teams did better – Audi by 0.035s – except Aston Martin, which admittedly was in no rush to send its cars back on track due to crippling engine vibrations.