Perez says Cadillac's development stall has made recent F1 races 'a disappointment'

Sergio Perez has described Cadillac’s recent Formula 1 races as “a disappointment”, pointing to a development plateau that has left the American team short of the lap-time gains it had targeted in its debut season.

Speaking on Formula 1’s Beyond the Grid podcast, Perez said Cadillac had hoped to find around two seconds of lap time across the opening half of the year but has managed only roughly one. That shortfall has become more painful as Aston Martin — the team Cadillac had been consistently outpacing to avoid last place — clawed back ground through aero upgrades in Hungary and the Netherlands, as well as Honda’s power-unit improvements.

“On everything, I think the last few races have been a disappointment. There’s a lot of disappointment because we haven’t been developing. We haven’t been improving,” Perez said. “Us being a new team, this is what we should be doing, like every time. So I felt like there was a bit of a stalling in the last few races.”

Perez acknowledged that the team has been forced to review its internal processes as a result. He framed the slowdown as a learning experience rather than a structural failure, noting that a new constructor inevitably faces a steep curve across multiple departments simultaneously.

“Being a new team, there’s a lot of things that we are constantly learning,” he said. “I don’t think we have improved as much as we hoped for — I don’t know, a second? But probably we were looking for two seconds.”

Despite the frustration, Perez struck a cautiously optimistic tone about what lies ahead. He argued that Cadillac is not fundamentally far off the established midfield teams and that finding the missing time would transform the team’s competitive position.

“If we improve our load, our ride, a lot of things, all of a sudden, we are not that far,” Perez said. “We are at the back, but half a second, one second will change our life completely at this stage. And I feel like for us being a new team, it’s in there. It’s possible.”

Cadillac entered Formula 1 this season as the grid’s eleventh team, and its early trajectory — moving clear of Aston Martin in the constructors’ standings — had offered genuine encouragement. Whether the team can reignite that momentum heading into 2026, when sweeping regulation changes reset much of the competitive order, remains the central question for Perez and the wider organisation.