The state of play at Cadillac after three races of the 2026 season

Cadillac became the 11th team on the grid in 2026, and the first completely new entrant in Formula 1 for a decade. With the experienced Graeme Lowdon at the helm, the team have already exceeded expectations in many ways as they facilitated a return to the grid for Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas. Here’s the state of play at the American squad after three rounds of the season…

How has the 2026 season gone so far?

Quite well all things considered. Bringing a brand-new team to the grid is not for the faint-hearted, with Cadillac having so much less data to draw on than their rivals. They knew they would be towards the back of the field, but were aiming for reliability and a solid base from which to build.

Testing went as expected – the American team had some issues, but did manage a very decent haul of laps across the six days in Bahrain.

Running the Ferrari engines has helped, as at least that gives them more data to work with – the Scuderia supplying Haas as well as their factory team. And those Ferrari engines have proved reasonably reliable too, with Perez able to finish every race so far.

Bottas saw the chequered flag in China and Japan, but retired in Australia midway through the Grand Prix with a fuel systems issue. He also ran into reliability woes in the Sprint in Shanghai, and then Cadillac suffered every team’s worst nightmare with Perez and Bottas colliding in the Grand Prix in China.

It was deemed a racing incident by the stewards, with both drivers apologising to each other afterwards.

No points yet, and no cars into Q2 in Qualifying but Bottas does have a P13 finish to his name, so there is certainly cause for optimism after three rounds of the 2026 season.

Reasons to be hopeful

Cadillac’s reliability has been solid, with Perez making it to the chequered flag in three out of three Grands Prix and the Sprint to boot. Many new teams have had far poorer reliability and been much further off the pace at the start of their F1 careers.

Perez finished on the lead lap in Japan, which in itself is a big improvement – in Australia he was three laps down at the flag. The team’s qualifying performance has moved on too, with Perez over six tenths off Aston Martin in Australia, but ahead of both green cars at Suzuka.

As Ferrari continue to gather crucial engine data, some of that will feed back to Cadillac as well, which should help the team optimise those power units – especially off the line.

Combine all of that with two drivers who know how top teams operate and how to win races, both of whom are putting the team first and bringing their considerable experience to the team, and it is hard to see anything but improvement for Cadillac this season.

Reasons to be cautious

While Cadillac have improved, the fight down the back with Aston Martin and at times Williams is some way off the midfield battles the team would like to be involved in.

And the American team is very short of data compared to their rivals, even if some of the historic data carries less weight this year due to the large scale regulations change. As and when issues arise – as they always do across a season – Cadillac might not be as well equipped to identify and fix any problems.

The sample size of three races is small, and it has yet to be seen if the likes of Williams can make a bit of a jump forward. If Aston Martin get on top of their issues too, suddenly Cadillac might find themselves adrift at the back of the pack.

What have the drivers and team bosses said?

There is plenty of optimism amongst the drivers and their boss so far, with both Perez and Bottas reiterating that they are putting the team first rather than racing for any personal glory.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in a short space of time, and we can be happy to get two cars past the finish yet again,” was Perez’s view on Japan, while Bottas called the race “much cleaner.”

Meanwhile, Lowdon said he was “proud” of how the team has performed so far this year. “I’m particularly pleased to see another significant step forward by the whole team in terms of execution and reliability,” he added, before confirming the team would be bringing their first upgrade package to Miami.

What do Cadillac need to work on going forwards?

Cadillac need a little bit of everything – reliability, pace and luck. The first will gain them more laps with which to gather data, which will be crucial in what is set to be a huge development race this season.

Pace is the next on the list, something every team wants more of. From further back, theoretically Cadillac’s gains could be bigger, but they need to fully exploit the Ferrari engine and refine their chassis design to do so.

As for luck, they will need a slice of that in any race where chaos ensues – a rain shower, a multi-car crash, reliability woes striking their rivals… Something out of the ordinary which could see them strike lucky and score in their debut season.