Bottas demands Cadillac fix brake failures after third straight Austrian GP retirement

Valtteri Bottas has demanded Cadillac resolve its mounting reliability crisis after he and teammate Sergio Perez both retired from the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday, each losing their cars to brake fires within the opening laps.

The double retirement extended a miserable run for the American outfit at Spielberg. Perez had already been hampered by electrical problems during Friday practice, while Bottas suffered a separate fire caused by a build error on his front floor tray. When race day arrived, higher ambient temperatures and limited cooling opportunities in traffic combined to ignite both cars’ brakes before lap three was complete.

“No warning,” Bottas said after the race. “Everything was under control in practice. We did more than 10 laps in a row. That’s normally more than enough to get the peak temperature at the beginning of the race. But I think today, with this slight increase in temperature, and then with the traffic effect, things just caught on fire already on lap two, so it’s a big issue. Obviously, we’ve got to find a fix for it.”

The timing is particularly frustrating because Cadillac arrived in Austria with a significant upgrade package for its MAC-26 that appeared to deliver a genuine step in performance. With Bottas now having retired in three consecutive races, the team is haemorrhaging the track mileage it needs to fully understand and develop its car.

“If we don’t finish the races, then we can’t really learn much out of the car and the package either,” Bottas added. “The priority is now pretty clear in Silverstone. We have to finish the race. That’s when we can learn.”

The Finn acknowledged that Cadillac had introduced new brake-cooling components for the Austrian weekend, but said they proved insufficient for the conditions encountered on race day. He described the double retirement as the most disappointing result of the season so far.

“We had new parts. We found that we got some more pace but if we don’t finish the race, then that’s what it is,” he said. “The only thing we can do is work hard as a team. That’s going to be the only solution and way to move forward.”

Cadillac now heads to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone needing to convert its apparent performance gains into race finishes before the development window for its first Formula 1 season narrows further.