Cadillac’s first Formula 1 campaign may have shown flashes of promise, but Sergio Perez has delivered a stark warning to the American squad: improve quickly, or risk being swallowed by the relentless development race.
The new team’s entry into F1 has already produced encouraging moments. Powered by Ferrari customer engines, Cadillac has occasionally mixed itself into midfield scraps and, in Miami, even looked capable of troubling more established operations.
But Perez knows isolated flashes mean little in modern Formula 1.
With Aston Martin having poured enormous resources into its own recovery project – including a state-of-the-art simulator and a technical structure strengthened by high-profile engineering hires – the Mexican fears Cadillac could rapidly lose ground if upgrades do not arrive fast enough.
Perez sees promise – but also danger
Miami offered one of Cadillac’s most competitive weekends so far. Perez briefly climbed to 15th in the sprint and 13th in the grand prix before fading back into battle with Aston Martin duo Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.
For Perez, racing wheel-to-wheel with Alonso was one of the weekend’s highlights.
“We're having fun with them, especially fighting Fernando, it's always a great thing because he's very aggressive and very fair,” Perez told the media in Miami last weekend.
Yet beneath the entertaining duel lay a deeper concern: Cadillac’s tyre degradation.
Perez admitted the team’s strategic calls and race pace still leave plenty of room for improvement.
“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.”
The bigger issue, however, is not a single strategy decision – it is Cadillac’s ability to keep developing quickly enough to survive Formula 1’s brutal arms race.
“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.”
The development race is already accelerating
Perez’s warning reflects the harsh reality Cadillac now faces. Getting its first car onto the grid was one challenge. Developing it fast enough against Formula 1’s established giants is another entirely.
The numbers underline the scale of the task. The American outfit consistently sat around 1.3 seconds away from the Q2 cutoff during the opening rounds of the season.
In Miami sprint qualifying, that gap shrank dramatically to just 0.3s – only for the team to slide backwards again in grand prix qualifying as rivals extracted more pace.
Perez believes understanding the MAC-26’s behaviour is now absolutely critical ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix.
“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.”
There are at least signs of operational progress.
Cadillac’s pitstop execution had been among the slowest on the grid earlier in the season, but Miami marked a noticeable improvement. Perez’s stop was finally competitive with established midfield teams, a small but important victory for a squad still learning the demands of Formula 1.
“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.”
For Cadillac, that may be the clearest message of all.
Moments of potential are no longer enough. In Formula 1, progress must become relentless — or the grid moves on without you.
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