Formula 1’s summer break has given the new Cadillac F1 team a much-needed opportunity to pause and regroup after an unrelenting spell of testing and race weekends that has been running since January. It has been a demanding period for every team, as all of them have had to adjust to new power units and revised chassis regulations. But when you are tackling that challenge for the first time—even with plenty of experienced F1 personnel in place—it becomes especially difficult.
So what would Cadillac’s 2026 mid-season report card look like? The fairest assessment is probably that it has made a respectable start in the circumstances—but the honeymoon phase is ending, and the time has now come to raise its level.
Team principal Graeme Lowdon, the man who assembled the entire project, accepts that the journey so far has been far from straightforward. “Nobody has the luxury to stand still in F1, and for new teams the same as well,” he told Road & Track. “So we can't just come in and then stand still while we acclimatise to everything. We've got to keep pushing. We're up against the best teams in the world, and they are all pushing, all of them. And so we have to push even harder to get to where we want to be. And that's what you're seeing now. And it's not always smooth, it's not always straightforward. That's the same up and down the pit lane.”
The first priority was simply to get a car onto the track so Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas could complete some invaluable mileage. To the team’s credit, the first Cadillac chassis was ready to run very early, but that also meant the initial specification was, in effect, very basic compared with its rivals. Unsurprisingly, the car was significantly off the pace in the opening races, and the next task was to launch a development programme—in other words, to design and manufacture new parts and then bring them to the circuit. Every process required to make that happen also had to function smoothly while the team was already occupied with the demands of simply getting to each race.
The encouraging part is that those new components have, in general, done exactly what they were intended to do: they have improved the car’s overall performance compared with where it started the season. That progress even drew notice from McLaren team boss Andrea Stella, who in Austria pointed to the gains Cadillac had made.
“It's nice that he sees it,” said Lowdon. “I think the other teams have seen it as well. The people who really understand the sport can certainly see that. We brought quite a few things since Melbourne—and one of the real plus points is they've been positive actually in every case, and also, the correlation of what we were hoping to see and what we're seeing is there as well. Which is obviously good, because it suggests that some of the simulation and the tools that we're working with are heading in the right direction. But we can't be complacent, and we just have to keep our heads down, and keep working as hard as we can.”
For a few races, Cadillac even managed to move away from the back row, qualifying and racing ahead of the struggling Aston Martin team, while also closing in on the likes of Williams and Haas further up the order. Aston Martin then took a step forward with its update package at the most recent round in Hungary, where Cadillac was pushed back to the rear once again. Relative performance against the opposition is an important benchmark ... but progress is impossible if you are not making it to the finish.
Weak reliability has proved very expensive for the team, with a string of problems that are relatively unusual at this level. Some retirements have been caused by one-off mistakes in the garage rather than design or manufacturing faults, serving as a reminder of just how difficult it is to get everything right. There have also been recurring brake-cooling troubles, first seen in Monaco—and despite efforts to address them, they were still present five races later in Hungary, where Bottas had to scrape along the pit-entry barrier to stop the car while flames and smoke came from the front wheels.
More concerning still were separate front-suspension issues for Perez in Canada and Hungary. The Mexican driver managed to stop the car safely on both occasions, but the consequences could have been more serious. A driver seeing the front wheels suddenly sitting out of line is hardly the sort of experience that builds confidence.
“Obviously, being a new team, you kind of expect all these issues,” said Perez when asked by Road & Track about the Budapest failure. “I think it's a little frustrating that it has happened very often. So I'm sure that we will use this break to make sure we are able to clean, and to improve all areas and different departments, because I think it's really important how we are able to progress in the second half of the season.”
“It’s the second time he has DNF'd with the suspension,” Bottas acknowledged. “So it's very clear where we've got to improve and fix issues to start finishing races.”
Lowdon admits the reliability setbacks have been painful. Even so, he views them as part of the learning curve. “Other teams may go back to the factory—the factories we go back to, we're still building them! And it is just a massive challenge for everyone. And the fact that we're making progress means that when we do have an issue of operation, it's obvious for people to see. If we were absolutely nowhere, then nobody would even notice. So we just take the positives from everything, and keep working hard and keep developing.”
Aston Martin’s own difficulties underline that point. After all, it is a team with an uninterrupted history stretching back to its origins as Jordan in 1991, and yet it has still stumbled. Seen in that light, there is a case to be made that Cadillac has not done too badly.
“F1 is so competitive,” said Lowdon. “The most competitive team sport in the world, in my view, and it's so complicated. Because the teams are so good at it—and they really are really good—everyone takes it for granted. When a team isn't where it wants to be, it's really visual. And not just with Aston. McLaren are at the front at the moment, but it wasn't that long ago that they weren't, and it just shows how difficult it is. I think most of the people in our team have been in F1 long enough to know exactly how difficult it is. So we don't really need reminding.”
The reality is that building a brand-new F1 team from the ground up is only the beginning; the real challenge lies in operating the cars and trying to improve in every department. The need to concentrate on designing and building the 2027 car while continuing to race the current one is set to be a major test for the team in the months ahead, so it will be fascinating to see whether Cadillac can close the gap to its rivals later this season.
