Damon Hill calls Bottas’s carryover grid drop “ridiculous” as Cadillac countdown begins
Damon Hill isn’t impressed. The 1996 world champion took to Instagram to brand Valtteri Bottas’s looming five-place grid penalty at the 2026 Australian Grand Prix “ridiculous,” after the Finn’s old sanction from Abu Dhabi 2024 resurfaced just as his Cadillac comeback gathers steam.
The timing doesn’t help the optics. Sergio Perez turned the first laps of Cadillac’s nascent 2026 challenger in a brief Silverstone shakedown on Friday, while Bottas has been busy with seat-fits ahead of his full-time return. It’s a fresh pairing with a familiar edge: a six-time grand prix winner alongside a 10-time grand prix winner, both with plenty to prove and a brand-new operation to steady on debut.
Bottas’s penalty was issued in his final outing for Sauber at the 2024 season finale after contact with Kevin Magnussen’s Haas. Under the updated 2026 sporting regs, unserved grid penalties will expire if they’re not taken within 12 months. Sensible housekeeping, that — except the change came after Bottas’s sanction was applied. The FIA has already said there’s no mechanism to retroactively wipe it away, stressing the rule tweak was designed to avoid precisely this kind of anomaly in future, not revisit past cases.
Hence Hill’s exasperation. On the face of it, he has a point: a driver switching teams, serving a carryover penalty more than a year on, with a new project trying to make a clean first impression, feels like punishment without much purpose. But the flip side is the sport can’t selectively backdate a rule change without opening a very messy can of worms. The letter of the law was clear at the time, and the governing body is sticking to it.
For Bottas, it’s a nuisance rather than a narrative-killer. He knows his way around Albert Park — he won there in 2019 — and a five-place hit is survivable if the car’s in the window and Saturday’s tidy. It will sting, though, for a team that would much prefer a straightforward launch instead of spending the first weekend playing catch-up.
The bigger picture around his move has been brewing for a while. After 2024, Bottas was squeezed out of Sauber as the team set its sights on a new era, and he spent 2025 in the shadows as Mercedes reserve. Cadillac came calling for 2026, pairing him with Perez, who brings years of front-running experience and a hard-earned reputation for racecraft. On paper, it’s a balanced lineup: Bottas’s qualifying punch and development calm, Perez’s Sunday instincts and tyre touch.
The early cadence of that partnership will be interesting. Shakedowns are shakedowns — wet, cold, straightline checks and we-didn’t-break-it smiles — but they matter for tone-setting. If Cadillac can stitch together a reliable test phase, this penalty becomes a footnote. If they’re on the back foot, it’s a headache they didn’t need.
Hill’s “How ridiculous” jab taps into a wider frustration fans often have with F1’s bureaucracy: too many caveats, not enough common sense. The sport has tried to clean up its grid-drop clutter, and credit where it’s due, the 12-month sunset clause is the right move. It just arrived one case too late for Bottas.
There’s also a human angle here that’s easy to miss. For a driver relaunching his career, every clean lap matters, every inch of momentum counts. Bottas, at his best, thrives when the noise falls away and the targets are simple. A five-place drop adds noise. He won’t complain publicly — he rarely does — but he’ll feel the aggravation.
Still, this is a long game. Melbourne is one race, one penalty, one chance to turn an awkward story into a tidy recovery drive. And if Cadillac gives him a car that bites into the braking zones and looks after its tyres, he’ll climb. He’s done it plenty.
Barring a late U-turn from the rulemakers — and there’s no sign of one — the penalty stands. It’s not elegant. It is consistent. And it means one of 2026’s most-watched debuts will start with a little extra traffic in Bottas’s mirrors.
What happens next? Perez and Bottas rack up miles, the engineers chase correlation, and the stopwatch starts answering the only question that really matters. If Cadillac’s baseline is solid, this whole episode will be remembered as a quirky footnote. If it isn’t, Hill’s one-word review might echo a little longer around the paddock.
