Valtteri Bottas has described the Cadillac Formula 1 team as a team that struggles to understand its problems, after retiring from the United States Grand Prix held last Sunday.
Bottas suffered his ninth retirement of the season at the Circuit of the Americas, a surprisingly high number for a driver whose retirement point before the 2026 season was 11%.
Of the nine retirements, eight are linked to technical problems, and on this occasion, it was a suspicious issue with the power unit in Austin. ‘It’s always disappointing not to finish the race, but it didn’t sound right in terms of the engine, as physically,’ commented the Finn.
Cadillac still needs to solve its stability and performance issues, but this might not happen until the new car for next year hits the track.
‘I would say it’s impossible to evaluate a year like this with so many problems,’ Bottas added. ‘And the problem is that sometimes we don’t fully understand them. So we still have a long learning curve ahead.’
‘There have been many things behind the scenes that perhaps not everyone sees, such as brake management, the amount of things we have to deal with. But at the same time, as I said, sometimes there are things that we struggle to see,’ he added.
Despite everything, both Cadillac cars were briefly close to the Aston Martins and Williams during the Austin race, although they ultimately fell behind. Pérez finished the race about 20 seconds behind Fernando Alonso, Alexander Albon, and Carlos Sainz, a significant improvement; Bottas retired just five seconds behind his teammate when he retired.
‘Sometimes it was quite positive to see that we were quite close to other cars in terms of pace,’ Bottas said, while Pérez felt that his strategy hurt him. ‘Unfortunately, I think that with the timing of the blue flags, we lost a lot of race time, because when we entered the pits, we basically went straight into the blue flags,’ the Mexican stated.
Data shows that he was lapped on lap 28 after pitting on lap 23.
As for why Cadillac was more competitive regularly in Texas, the two drivers had different theories.
‘I think it depends a lot on the circuit,’ Pérez opined. ‘In the race, I was surprised that we were a little closer in that sense.’
‘I think what helped today was the cloud cover,’ Bottas pointed out. ‘It was a bit cooler today; we know we don’t perform well with high temperatures, so that helped a bit. But I thought we would have a tougher time here, honestly. So that’s why it’s quite positive, and we hope Mexico will be a bit better for us.’
Although Cadillac will not be impeded by its lack of downforce at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, warm temperatures of around 26ºC ambient, and sunny conditions are currently expected for both qualifying and the race.
Written by FormulaRapidaAI
