Cadillac logged its most consistent Formula 1 outing yet at Suzuka, bringing both cars home and showing better pace against Aston Martin. Sergio Pérez called it their best race so far and said the car was “clearly faster than the Aston Martin.” He backed the plan to roll out upgrades in Miami and said the team feels the work is moving in the right direction.
Pérez finished 17th and Valtteri Bottas 19th in the Japanese Grand Prix. The result did not bring points, but it repeated the double finish from two weeks earlier and gave engineers a clean race sample to study. The team has yet to score after three rounds of its debut season, yet the tone was upbeat. On Sunday the Cadillac looked more competitive in traffic and on longer runs, which supported Pérez’s view that the package had taken a step.
Pérez said Suzuka showed their strongest race form of the year. He pointed to progress made in a short time and to a car balance that let him attack more in the first half of the race. He noted the group felt in control on Sunday even after a fuel-supply issue in qualifying hurt grid position. The better race pace against Aston Martin stood out to him. That comparison mattered inside the garage, as it offered a clear marker for how updates are working against a direct rival.
Bottas was less pleased with how his race played out. He started on hard tires and said that call did not work. He sat behind an Aston Martin in the early laps and lost the chance to use clean air. After the Safety Car restart he found himself alone on pace, with no cars to tow or chase in his window. The lack of traffic help limited his ability to show the car’s improved speed. He still called the weekend cleaner than the previous ones and said the team learned from the runs.
The split feelings matched a mixed race picture. One car showed the relative pace gain that Pérez described. The other got stuck off-sequence on strategy and could not match the lap times when it mattered. For a young program, the team treated both views as useful. Race control, pit wall calls, and tire preparation under caution all went into the review plan as the crew headed back to base.
Cadillac will use the short break before Miami to dig into the Suzuka data. Engineers plan to focus development on the areas that helped against Aston Martin and on the weak spots Bottas faced in traffic. The team expects to introduce upgrades in Miami aimed at improving one-lap speed and race pace. The target is to close the gap to the midfield and to make fights on track more sustainable over a stint. The group believes Suzuka provided a solid baseline to measure those parts.
The outlook is steady rather than flashy. Finishing both cars again matters for reliability tracking and setup learning. Pérez’s confidence in the race pace offers a clear signal that the direction is working. Bottas’s feedback frames where execution and tire choices can improve. Miami will test those fixes on a very different layout and surface. If the updates land as planned, Cadillac should have a better chance to race its immediate rivals and turn consistent Sundays into a push for its first points.