Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas finished a distant P18 and P19 in the 2026 F1 Italian GP on Sunday for Cadillac.
In qualifying, the former Mercedes driver outpaced the former Red Bull man as he continued his recent Saturday dominance.
Following the red flag, it was a split strategy from there for the Mexican and Finn. Pérez went for a soft-medium option, while Bottas did the reverse.
Having got ahead at the start, the driver of car #11 had fights with Alex Albon and Fernando Alonso through the first half of the race, with car #77 about 3-4s behind for most of it. Both drivers pitted under the VSC and had slow stops. They were over 6s.
The final 25 laps were lonely drives for Pérez and Bottas as the Aston Martin cars had retired.
Pérez looks back on tough 2026 F1 Italian GP
Speaking in the print media pen after the race, the six-time race winner explained how difficult it was with a lack of power on the straights, with the Ferrari PU clearly down on the Mercedes one. Cadillac also did not have their new rear wing, or the engine upgrade Ferrari brought to the 2026 F1 Italian GP.
“Yeah, it was a really tough day out there. A lot of fighting with the energy management.
“It was a bit of a fun in the beginning.
“Generally, we were slow on the straights, I think that was the main issue. Not having the new rear wing and not having the new engine was very penalising around here. We couldn’t fight the other cars. It was a very difficult race.”
Sergio Pérez explained how costly a lack of new parts were. He hopes that can be sorted soon.
“We have the engine, we just don’t have the parts. We also have the rear wing, but it was a little bit of a hurry to get the parts in.
“I’m sure that there will be a massive push to try and get those things as early as possible.”
With Monza the most important race of the year regarding having a qualifying engine, the Mexican was left to rue a lack of horsepower.
“This was really painful.
“Especially as I could see that I was the same in the corners, but I lost a couple of seconds on the straights.
“That was very difficult. That was a little bit unfortunate.”
Blue flags hamper Valtteri Bottas
As previously mentioned, both Cadillac drivers had 6-second plus stops. However, it hurt Valtteri Bottas far more.
He came out close to Piastri and Hamilton. With Antonelli, Verstappen (these two on fresh tyres), Norris and Gasly also coming along soon after, he was losing tonnes of race time getting out of the way. A gap of less than a second to Pérez before they double stacked under VSC was over 30s by the flag. In fact the Finn got lapped twice, with the Mexican only one tour down at the end.
Valtteri Bottas explained how frustrating the second stint was in the 2026 F1 Italian GP.
“Yeah, I think we both had slow stops. I had maybe even slower, and that’s why I dropped straight into blue flags.
“We were kind of trying to avoid them, but literally when we started racing again there were blue flags all the way, so it was really hard to find the rhythm after that.”
Tyres, reliability and lots of work to do for Cadillac
Regarding how he felt on the softs and mediums, he preferred the yellow sidewall tyre, although he did not get a great read on the softer one because of the traffic.
“Yeah, I actually preferred the medium tyre. We thought the soft would be having the same deg as the medium, but it didn’t really seem like the case.
“But my last stint was pretty mixed with the blue flags, there were so many of them.”
The 2026 F1 Italian GP was stiflingly hot. Cadillac have struggled all year with keeping brake temperatures under control at very warm races, leading to a number of DNFs in their first year.
While Bottas was satisfied about that, he knows a lot of work is ahead as Aston Martin was the only team Cadillac could fight with at the 2026 F1 Italian GP due to Honda’s lack of power.
With Madrid a more technical track, Cadillac are likely to be well off the back on their own once more.
“Yeah, I mean with these temperatures to finish the race with both cars, that’s good. But yeah, we still know we need to keep working.
“But race pace wise it was kind of like we feared that we were a bit between Astons and the rest.”
