Cadillac enters break in crisis after Hungary DNFs

Cadillac heads into Formula 1’s summer break under growing pressure after another double retirement at the Hungarian Grand Prix left its debut season still mired in reliability trouble.

Valtteri Bottas retired after 13 laps when brake overheating developed into a fire, and Sergio Perez followed after 48 laps when a suspension failure ended his race. It was the second time this season that both Cadillac entries have gone out with technical defects.

Perez said the frequency of the failures had become impossible to brush aside. Speaking Sunday evening, Sergio Perez, Cadillac driver, called the situation “more than worrying” and said that while a new team can expect problems “to a certain degree,” “it’s frustrating that it has happened so often now.” He said he did not yet know the root cause of his retirement, only that “the suspension just broke in Turn 5.”

Perez explained that the left-front wheel suddenly began to vibrate, making it impossible to hold the racing line and sending him off track. He managed to bring the MAC-26 back via the run-off area and return to the pits, but the damage was too severe to continue. He also said he had felt earlier in the race that something was still not quite right with the car.

Bottas’s retirement was no less troubling for Cadillac because it came despite a change aimed at fixing the same weakness. He said the team had introduced a new brake duct to improve ventilation around the front brakes, but “obviously we still need more airflow. Hungary showed that.” In the extreme heat and on a circuit that places heavy demand on the braking system, he said temperatures rose until “everything inside practically started burning,” which then destroyed the assembly.

Before that, Bottas said he had already been trying to protect both fuel and brakes by lifting earlier and letting the car roll. Even after believing the situation was under control, he said, “suddenly practically everything was in flames.” Once the failure escalated, he had no braking performance left. Bottas said he suspects the brake lines burned, and that he had to use the wall to slow the car before stopping with help from marshals.

The result sharpened the sense that Cadillac’s underlying problems are now outweighing any progress it has made in its first season. The team remains the only one on the grid without a World Championship point, and in Hungary it was 2.6 seconds off the fastest qualifying time as it continued to occupy the back of the field.

That leaves the next few weeks as a critical reset. Perez said Cadillac would use the pre-shutdown week and summer break to eliminate its weak points and improve across the operation, adding that the work would be decisive in determining how much the team can develop in the second half of the season. In Cadillac’s post-race team statement, team principal Graeme Lowdon said the priority is to understand exactly what happened in Budapest and make sure the issues are addressed before the team returns at Zandvoort.