Valtteri Bottas shared his insights on Cadillac‘s development in their debut 2026 F1 season thus far and reflected on the progress the American team has made as the sport enters the summer break.
After 11 rounds of the season, Cadillac remains the only team that has yet to score a single point. The team currently sits last in the 2026 F1 Constructors’ Championship. Regardless, the Finnish driver remains motivated by Cadillac’s upward trajectory. As Bottas reflected, while there has yet to be any major improvement in pace and reliability, the team has seen progress through the upgrades brought thus far.
Bottas on Cadillac’s 2026 F1 season development cycle as a new team
Like many teams on the F1 grid, Cadillac had brought its first major aerodynamic upgrade package to the 2026 F1 Miami GP weekend. Since then, the team has been consistent in bringing other subsequent upgrades to its 2026 challenger.
Bottas spoke on these upgrades and highlighted that the upgrades brought to his MAC-26 have been functioning as intended and translated into an improvement in his on-track performance. A very encouraging feat for the debutant team, which the Finnish driver takes as a promising sign for Cadillac’s long-term development beyond the 2026 F1 season.
“Well, everything we brought to the car has made it quicker. It’s made it better, so I think that’s really positive for a new team. It’s not a guarantee in Formula 1 that the parts that you put in the car that it actually work, you know, so I think that’s promising for the future. So we’ve made steps. We haven’t made like huge steps but we’ve seen progress.”
While Aston Martin sits above Cadillac in the 2026 F1 Constructors’ Championship by a single point, both Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas have consistently outpaced the Silverstone outfit in recent races as Aston Martin waited to bring their first major upgrade package to the 2026 F1 Hungarian GP. Nonetheless, prior to the weekend, the 36-year-old was encouraged by the team’s improvement in pace, noting that the minor updates had allowed them to pull away from their main rivals.
“And I think what’s been quite evident if we compare ourselves to Aston Martin, as they haven’t really been upgrading their car yet. We’ve seen that we’ve been able to get further away from them and quite a good chunk, and that has come from these small improvements.”
Cadillac’s progress compared to top teams
While Cadillac uses Aston Martin as their main benchmark, Bottas shared that when compared to the top teams, the American team’s “development rate has been good”. Nonetheless, the Finnish driver acknowledged that while the team’s developmental rate was impressive for a rookie team, Cadillac lacked the decades of experience and the refined workflow possessed by veteran teams with the likes of McLaren and Ferrari. Hence, at its current stage, it would be extremely difficult for the team to match their level of development.
Regardless, Bottas remains optimistic that Cadillac will be able to continue its upward trajectory in the following seasons, especially when they have a more reliable chassis to serve as a base to build upon.
“I think compared to the top teams, our development rate has been good. But yeah, to be able to actually get much closer to them is tricky because, you know there’s teams here they’ve been here forever, and they know how to develop the car. It’s like their factory is like a well-oiled machine. You know, they keep producing parts. It’s almost a guarantee that in the wind tunnel every month they found something, and competing against that as a new team it’s hard to do better than them.”
“At least, we, like you said, we’ve seen we made the car clearly faster, but to catch the others that’s the tricky part and that’s why I think a lot of things are relying on how the new car is born and this is speaking about next year so hopefully that can be a bigger step forward and then we can go from there.”
