Racing
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Cadillac left the Austrian Grand Prix with both cars out in the opening laps from brake fires, and Valtteri Bottas says the team now has to redesign its brake-cooling package even if that costs aerodynamic performance.
Bottas retired on lap two at the Red Bull Ring and Sergio Perez followed two laps later after both Cadillacs overheated their brakes, despite the team arriving with a significant upgrade package and new brake-cooling parts for the weekend. For a new team trying to build momentum, the double retirement turned a promising update into another reliability setback.
Bottas made clear the compromise he thinks Cadillac now has to accept. Speaking to media including RacingNews365, the Cadillac driver said: "It is clear that we've got to re-design some bits; otherwise, we're not going to finish races." He added: "There will be an aerodynamic cost to using a bigger brake, but I'll take that penalty to finish a race. We've got to start finishing races; that's when we learn."
What made the failure more troubling was that neither driver saw it coming. Bottas said there was "no warning" and that practice running had looked normal, with Cadillac completing more than 10 consecutive laps, usually enough to expose peak temperatures before a race. Instead, he said a slight rise in temperature and the effect of traffic pushed the brakes over the limit almost immediately. "Things just caught on fire already on lap two, so it's a big issue," he said.
Perez pointed to the same trigger, saying Cadillac had underestimated the effect of traffic after a weekend already disrupted by problems. He called Austria the team's worst weekend of the season and said what happened was "totally unacceptable," with the bigger frustration being the lack of visible progress.
That frustration is growing because Austria was not an isolated failure. Bottas has now retired from three consecutive grands prix, with earlier problems linked in summaries to brake or overheating issues in Monaco and Spain, while Perez also dealt with brake trouble in Monaco practice. Austria also included other operational setbacks, with Perez hit by electrical issues on Friday and Bottas losing running after a build error led to a fire on his front floor tray.
The damage goes beyond the result. Both drivers said Cadillac had found encouraging pace from its latest updates, with Bottas describing another step in performance and moments when the team looked closer to the midfield than the back of the grid. But with both cars retired before the race settled, Cadillac lost the mileage it needed to validate the MAC-26 package and understand where the gains really are.
That is why the priority has shifted so sharply before Silverstone. Bottas said, "If we don't finish the races, then we can't really learn much out of the car and the package either. The priority is now pretty clear in Silverstone. We have to finish the race. That's when we can learn."