Building on finishes in Australia, China, and Japan, Cadillac F1 faces its toughest test: rapidly outpacing established midfield teams like Alpine and Williams, driver Sergio Perez says. The team showed promise at Suzuka—beating struggling Aston Martins but lagging 2.3 seconds behind frontrunners and one second off midfield in Q1—ahead of major upgrades for its home Miami Grand Prix.
Cadillac, F1's 11th team and US-owned outfit based in Silverstone (with Indiana HQ under construction), resolved early reliability woes to complete its opening races. Recent minor upgrades delivered expected rear downforce gains without balance issues, per technical consultant Pat Symonds. However, Perez stressed the core hurdle remains aggressive development to close the gap. > It has been very promising, but on the other hand, we also look at the lap times and we can see that we need to develop. Develop means out-developing our rivals, which is quite a hard thing to do in Formula 1. That's the biggest challenge that Cadillac as a team faces. Symonds, working with ex-Renault tech chief Nick Chester, is confident in the team's robust processes and budgeted upgrade push within the cost cap. > I think we've got a very robust process for that. We've already planned out quite an aggressive development programme. I'm pretty confident we can deliver on that. Perez highlighted lap-time improvements between China and Japan, with the team using the pre-Miami break to refine operations after debuting two F1 cars just a month prior. Rivals are also gearing up with similar enhancements for Miami.