Seven races into its debut Formula 1 campaign, Cadillac remains the only team yet to score. Sergio Perez briefly thought he had broken that duck at Monaco, taking 10th on the road, only for a post-race penalty to gift the spot to Fernando Alonso. There is genuine momentum, though — and a single, stubborn weakness holding it back: tyre life.
In qualifying, the newcomer is closing fast. Autosport crunched the first seven rounds and found Cadillac has recovered more than a second of one-lap pace, with Perez cutting his deficit from 3.098s behind George Russell in Australian Q1 to just 1.920s off Lewis Hamilton in Barcelona — about a 1.4 percent improvement. At a track that usually ranks cars on downforce efficiency and power, both Cadillacs beat the Aston Martins in Spanish qualifying by over a second.
The races tell a harsher story. By Autosport's numbers, Perez was losing roughly 0.65s a lap to Carlos Sainz's Williams on softs, then nearer a full second a lap on the hards once the rubber gave up. Perez agrees with the read on his car.
"Whenever we have a stint longer than 15 laps, we seem to struggle a lot with a massive cliff," Perez told Crash.net. "We understand pretty well where that is coming from, and we have a pretty good idea on where to fix it and how, but it will just take a few races from now."
Pressed on where the lap time is hiding, he has consistently pointed at the aerodynamics. "I think there are several areas, but currently the main one is aerodynamic load. That's where we're lacking the most," Perez told grandprix247. "The balance isn't too bad, but we lack downforce."
Help is on the way, in instalments — Cadillac has logged a development at every round so far, and the Austrian package is the largest yet. "We are bringing a big package for Austria. I hope that will bring us into the midfield group," Perez said. He refused to promise a cure, however: "No. It will not solve it. It will improve it though, and I think we are looking forward to — hopefully, Silverstone will be the place that we will resolve it."
Team principal Graeme Lowdon had braced for a difficult Barcelona. "Going into the weekend we knew that Barcelona would be a much tougher track for us, reflecting where we are on pace right now," he said in the team's race report. "We now head to Austria, which will be a very different track yet again, but with some upgrades to come we are hopeful of continuing the solid progress demonstrated this year."
Valtteri Bottas, forced to retire in Spain as a precaution, echoed the qualifying optimism. "There are still positives to take as we seem to be a bit closer to the midfield in Qualifying and my pitstop was great," he said. "This is all part of the journey we're on, so we'll continue to look forward."
Across drivers, principal and data, the verdict is the same: Cadillac can deliver a lap, but not yet a race distance. The Red Bull Ring (June 26-28) has one of the shortest laps on the calendar, which could play to the car's qualifying strengths — yet its long straights and hard stops will still punish a tyre that drops off after 15 laps. By Perez's own timeline, the definitive fix is pencilled in for Silverstone.
