Why Cadillac is "in a massive hurry to find performance" in F1 2026

Cadillac’s Formula 1 debut has been encouraging, but the team is now “in a massive hurry to find performance”, according to Sergio Perez.

Having joined the world championship this year with customer Ferrari power units, Cadillac has been challenging the troubled Aston Martin-Honda squad, which Perez has described as “great motivation” for the team.

At the Miami Grand Prix, the Mexican even briefly fought amongst the midfield, reaching 15th place in the sprint and 13th in the grand prix before other cars fought back.

In the end, both races ended up as three-way battles against Aston drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll for Perez, who was narrowly beaten by the two-time F1 champion on both occasions.

“We're having fun with them, especially fighting Fernando, it's always a great thing because he's very aggressive and very fair,” Perez commented.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing, Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

“We were degrading the tyres a little bit too much and we chose the hard which, in hindsight, I would have gone for soft. So it's something there to analyse.

“There is a bit of work to do, but I'm confident. I think we're heading in the right direction. I can see at times as soon as the degradation starts to kick enough, we can be with the midfield but they are just able to pick up the pace quite a lot.

“Still a long season, but obviously we are in a massive hurry to find performance because we know Aston is going to be improving and we don't want to be left behind.”

After successfully putting its maiden F1 car on track as early as 16 January, Cadillac is indeed facing an equally big challenge in the development race – especially given Lawrence Stroll’s mammoth investment into the Aston outfit, which has headhunted key engineers from rival teams in the last few years.

Infrastructure-wise, Aston’s brand-new wind tunnel has been up and running for about a year – the squad announced it on 13 March 2025, but team principal and managing technical partner Adrian Newey subsequently stated it “wasn’t on song until April” – and will be a key asset for the Silverstone-based squad as it strives to improve the AMR26.

After being a consistent 1.3s away from the Q2 cutoff time during the opening three rounds, Cadillac was just 0.3s down in sprint qualifying in Miami, but its deficit ballooned up to 1.7s on Saturday as the MAC-26 went slower while most cars gained time relative to the sprint session.

“Understanding this package will be key to make some more progress coming to Canada, because we need to understand this package more and try to bring better solutions,” Perez added. “We don't have much time, but I think one of the short-term things that we need to do is our tyre degradation. We have some ideas there, but just putting all the groups together will be the biggest work in the coming weeks for the team.”

Sergio Perez, Cadillac Racing

Photo by: CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP via Getty Images

Miami did provide a positive in the form of a seamless tyre change for Perez: “The pitstop today was amazing, really, really good job by the team, which shows we can do the stops, so we have to be like that in a lot of different departments in the coming weekends.”

Pitstop-wise, Cadillac previously was second-slowest in Melbourne in terms of time spent in the pitlane; it was by far slowest in China, with its benchmark a 25.793s when Perez pitted in the sprint. Every other team was at least 2.6s faster – except Audi, who suffered from a wheelgun failure in its sole pitstop of the weekend.

Then Cadillac was slowest again in Japan, but Perez’ Miami pitstop – 23.228s from pit entry to exit – was quicker than what Ferrari, Haas and Audi achieved in Florida. This is a marked improvement from the mechanics, though there’s room for more; the fastest pitstop belonged to Mercedes, with George Russell, in 22.042s.