I remember November 2012 like it was yesterday. Fresh out of university, I found myself in a job interview with what is now part of Motorsport Network.
There I was, sitting on a couch at Sendlinger Tor in Munich, facing Germany’s chief editor Christian Nimmervoll who was tasked with putting my skills to the test. One of my assignments: write a column on a topic of my choice.
I found one in no time. As luck would have it, just a few days earlier I had written a piece on exactly that for a private news outlet called Magdeburger Nachrichten. Back then, my routine was to pick out one specific talking point from each grand prix that had caught my eye.
Just before my interview, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix had taken place, and the headline of my piece read: “Dangerous Rattletraps”.
Anyone who can still picture that race knows exactly where this is going: backmarkers HRT, whose cars routinely fell apart underneath their drivers, triggering one dangerous situation after another. In Abu Dhabi, Narain Karthikeyan suddenly suffered a hydraulic failure, causing his steering wheel to jam.
Nico Rosberg, tucked right under his gearbox, stood absolutely no chance of avoiding him. He ploughed into the back of the Indian’s car, went airborne, and slammed into the barriers.
And that wasn’t the only hair-raising moment either. Karthikeyan and his team-mate Pedro de la Rosa certainly couldn’t have climbed into that cockpit with much peace of mind back then.
For my test, I tried to copy my thoughts from a few days prior 1:1. I titled the column: “Is it still running, or is it ready for the scrap heap?”
And somehow, Cadillac is giving me major flashbacks to that right now.
The parallels are impossible to ignore. I simply cannot imagine that Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas have an ounce of confidence in their MAC-26 at the moment. Because every single time they buckle up, they have to fear that something else is going to break.
Whether it’s mirrors dropping off, sidepods flying away, or suspension snapping in two like it did in Canada: it feels like every single part of that Cadillac has gone rogue at some point – and that can’t be a great feeling for a driver.
But the absolute nightmare scenario for any driver is when the brakes give up. And that is exactly what happened to Bottas during FP3 in Barcelona. “I’ve lost my brake pedal. The pedal is completely gone,” the Finn radioed to his team at the time.
Thinking on his feet, Bottas found another way to stop: he banged down through the gears on the straight before Turn 10, relying purely on engine braking. He still overshot the corner, but luckily came to a halt in the massive gravel trap. Had this happened in Monaco, it would have been a completely different story.
This weekend in Spielberg, the newcomer’s nightmare run of reliability issues rolled right on: Perez ground to a halt twice on Friday, while Bottas’s car caught fire. On Sunday, his brakes did exactly the same – after a mere two laps. Perez only made it two laps further before his diagnosis: smoke in the cockpit.
“It was really sudden,” Bottas explained. “I only got the smoke before Turn 4 and then out of Turn 4, I saw the fire. So, it was like smoke before the fire and really rapid. And then even though I didn’t use the brakes in Turns 6, 7, 8, it didn’t calm down. So, it was clear that everything was just cooked.”
For Bottas, it was his third DNF on the bounce: he’d already suffered a brake failure in Monaco, followed by his car overheating in Barcelona. The frequency of these defects is deeply alarming.
“If we don’t finish the races, then we can’t really learn much out of the car and the package either,” he muttered on Sunday evening, visibly frustrated.
Burning brakes ended Valtteri Bottas’ Austrian GP
Photo by: Anni Graf – Formula 1 via Getty Images
Bottas surely envisioned a very different reality when he put pen to paper with Cadillac. Perhaps a fairytale entry like the one Haas enjoyed when they burst onto the Formula 1 grid in 2016.
Romain Grosjean crossed the line in sixth in the team’s very first race back then, sparking wild celebrations. The cheers were just as loud when he went one better and finished fifth just a race later. Throw in an eighth place in Sochi, and Haas had scored points in three of its first four races.
Cadillac is lightyears away from that.
Speaking of which, I would have given Perez a sleepless night back in Monaco, but at the time Charles Leclerc nominated instead. Yet Perez had thrown away a golden opportunity to grab his first points with a thoroughly foolish move.
The Mexican had lined up too far forward in his grid box at the restart (not for the first time) and copped a penalty for it. Tenth place and that historic first point went up in smoke, landing of all places in the lap of Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin, which itself is hopelessly inferior to Cadillac.
That blunder hurt badly and might have already settled the battle for 10th in the constructors’ championship. And yet, it has rarely been easier in recent years to beat another team in F1.
Sergio Perez narrowly missed out on points in Monaco
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
I must admit that, with Haas in mind, I expected quite a bit more from Cadillac. My bold prediction was that Cadillac would leave at least two teams in its wake.
I no longer believe that’s going to happen.
But let me clear one thing up: I am not saying Cadillac doesn’t belong in Formula 1. I am a massive fan of backmarkers; I even wrote my bachelor’s thesis on them. I love scrappy, duct-tape operations like Andrea Moda, and I don’t find the hyper-professionalism of modern Formula 1 particularly thrilling.
Besides: the more cars on the grid, the better.
So, I’m glad Cadillac is here and providing us with storylines. And yet, I can’t help but wonder if this is truly the fulfilment Bottas was hoping for from his Formula 1 comeback.
Does Bottas, at 36 years old, really need to be making up the numbers at the very back of the grid? In a car that has zero chance of scoring points and always carries the risk of something vital giving up the ghost?
I don’t think so.
He must be pondering whether it’s truly worth risking his life time and again. Even if his answer is yes, he’ll still be sleeping poorly right now. Because on track, the Finn is completely lost at sea against Perez.
He’s trailing 2-6 in their internal qualifying head-to-head, having lost all of the last four shootouts. And in the races, he doesn’t even get a chance to prove his worth right now.
His saving grace might just be that Cadillac’s preferred driver, Colton Herta, isn’t exactly setting the world on fire in Formula 2 either at the moment, having only scored points in four out of 12 races.
That might just save his seat for the time being. If he even wants it, that is.
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