Cadillac Shows Early F1 Progress After Miami Step

After just four Grands Prix in its debut Formula 1 season, Cadillac has moved well beyond its own worst-case expectations, starting every race with both cars, finishing seven times from eight starts, and showing enough pace and execution to fight at the back of the midfield.

That matters because Cadillac arrived in 2026 keeping its expectations in check. The team accepted it would probably finish last and, early on, even had to consider the possibility of struggling around the 107% qualifying cut-off or being lapped multiple times in races. Instead, those fears faded quickly once the team hit the ground running in testing.

The early record backs that up. Cadillac has taken the chequered flag seven times in eight attempts, a completion rate bettered only by Mercedes and Ferrari in the source material. It has also put both cars on the grid for all four Grands Prix, something McLaren, Williams and Audi have not managed.

Its clearest operational step came in Miami. After taking a conservative approach to pit stops in the first three races, Cadillac delivered the seventh- and ninth-fastest tyre changes of the Grand Prix, with Sergio Pérez stopping in 2.73 seconds and Valtteri Bottas in 2.96. Graeme Lowdon, Cadillac team leader, said: "These pit stops were really impeccable. We made several stops that represented a big advance."

The same sense of progress is visible in the team’s development work. Lowdon said the updates are translating from the factory to the track as intended, giving Cadillac confidence that its tools are pointing in the right direction. "The updates have worked as we wanted. We have an almost constant flow of news coming," he said.

Cadillac is not without a clear weakness. The car still lacks aerodynamic load in medium- and high-speed corners, which has limited it on faster sections. Bottas said: "Our main problem are the fast corners and the ones with medium speed." The team expects an upgrade package in the second third of the season to reduce that deficit, and sees Montreal as a circuit that should suit it better because of its slow corners, heavy braking and traction zones. "We hope to be closer in Canada. The lap is short and the differences should be smaller," Bottas said.

For Cadillac, though, the bigger issue is credibility rather than isolated results. Dan Towriss, Cadillac F1 team CEO, made clear that the team will only earn serious support if it keeps improving, and that criticism would be justified if progress stalls. He rejected any attempt to dress up poor qualifying positions as moral victories, saying: "I’m not going to try to justify 18th and 19th in qualifying as a moral victory."

Towriss said the standard is simple: show that there is no stagnation and that the team is changing from race to race. In a debut season that began with fears of merely surviving weekends, Cadillac’s first month has instead become a test of whether this upward trajectory can continue into a more competitive midfield fight.