Valtteri Bottas was upbeat following qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix because his Cadillac felt “like a different car” compared with previous rounds in the 2026 Formula 1 season.
It has been a testing start to Cadillac’s debut campaign, as it is one of two teams alongside Aston Martin yet to score a point with the season now on its fourth race weekend in Miami.
Cadillac has usually been between two to four seconds off the pace in Q1 this year, and although that continued into qualifying for Sunday’s grand prix, Bottas could see the potential.
It comes after the American outfit brought nine different upgrades to its first home race, leading to Bottas qualifying 20th – 2.976s off the quickest Q1 time – though he will start 19th due to Isack Hadjar’s disqualification.
“We could see that some things were not performing as they should in my car and now it was a lot better,” said the Cadillac driver.
“It was like a different car so I was actually struggling a little bit with the balance because of that but in a positive way, because I gained some rear grip in this session. So hopefully that helps tomorrow.”
Bottas is therefore confident that Cadillac has made progress despite still being up to two seconds off the Q2 pace.
Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac Racing
Photo by: Brett Farmer / LAT Images via Getty Images
When asked if the team has made a step forward, the veteran replied: “Yeah, I think so. Positions are still the same than before, but I think the gap is a bit closer to many other teams.
“So, I think we’re getting there step by step but we’re still understanding, we still need to understand better many things.”
Bottas qualified one spot and three tenths above team-mate Sergio Perez, who thinks Cadillac could have beaten Aston Martin – the gap was at least five tenths – had he produced a clean lap.
“We got a much better run yesterday than today,” said Perez. “We did a lot of changes obviously today, which I think we probably took a step back and then qualifying for me was very messy, missing the second lap, which was my mistake pressing the wrong button.
“On the third lap I had a massive overdelivery as I was braking into [Turn] 14 and I just went straight, so I lost that lap as well unfortunately.
“I think we could have been very close to Fernando [Alonso], if not ahead. But yeah, we certainly looked a lot more competitive yesterday.”
Additional reporting by Stuart Codling
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