Bottas suffers ninth DNF of the season as Cadillac admits reliability still a mystery

Valtteri Bottas retired from the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas on Sunday with a suspected power-unit failure, his ninth DNF of the 2026 Formula 1 season and the eighth attributed to a technical problem — a rate that stands in stark contrast to his pre-Cadillac career DNF figure of 11%.

“It’s always disappointing not to finish, but it didn’t sound great from the engine side, like physically,” Bottas said after climbing out of his stricken car in Austin. The Finn was just five seconds behind team-mate Sergio Perez when he was forced to pull over, underlining how close the two cars had been running before the failure struck.

The broader picture at Cadillac remains one of frustration. “I would say it’s impossible to get a read on a year like this with so many issues,” Bottas added. “And the problem is sometimes we don’t quite understand them. So it’s really still a steep learning curve to go. There’s been lots of things in the background that maybe not everyone sees, like the brake management, the amount of having to deal with that and all these things. But at the same time, sometimes there’s been some issues that we’re struggling to see.”

Despite the retirement, there were brief flickers of encouragement in Texas. Both Cadillac cars briefly ran in the vicinity of the Aston Martins and Williams during the race, a level of competitiveness the team has rarely shown this season. Perez eventually finished around 20 seconds behind Fernando Alonso, Alexander Albon and Carlos Sainz — a result the Mexican felt was compromised by the timing of his pit stop. “Unfortunately I think with the timing of the blue flags we lost a lot of race time, because as we pitted we basically went straight into the blue flags,” Perez said. Data confirmed he was lapped on lap 28, five laps after pitting on lap 23.

Bottas attributed the relative pace improvement to cooler conditions created by cloud cover at COTA. “We know we are not great when it’s high temperatures, so that helped a bit,” he said. “But I thought it was going to be more difficult for us here, honestly. So that’s why it’s kind of positive, and Mexico should be hopefully a bit better for us.”

Pérez was more cautious in his assessment, describing the circuit as simply suiting the car better. “I think it’s very, very track-dependent,” he said. “In the race I was surprised that we were a bit closer in that regard.”

With the Mexican Grand Prix at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez next on the calendar, Cadillac will be hoping the lower-downforce demands of the circuit play to their strengths — though warm ambient temperatures in Mexico City could offset any gains the team made in the cooler Austin air.