Sergio Perez didn’t need long to swap the wide-eyed novelty of a new project for the harder edge of expectation. Cadillac’s first Formula 1 weekend might have ended with one car classified and plenty of cameras circling the newest badge on the grid, but Perez was quick to make one thing clear in Melbourne: the pleasantries have a short shelf life.
“The first step is done as a team,” Perez said after the Australian Grand Prix, reflecting on Cadillac simply getting to the chequered flag in its first start. “Completing the race was incredible.”
That was the headline Cadillac came to Albert Park needing. In a sport that can chew up fresh entries on reliability alone, a finish at the first attempt carries weight internally, even if it doesn’t move the needle on the timing screens. Cadillac arrived as the first brand-new team to join the grid since Haas a decade earlier, and the weekend followed a familiar expansion-team script: firefighting early, learning in public, and trying to keep the mood buoyant while the stopwatch tells the truth.
In qualifying, Perez and Valtteri Bottas were the last two drivers to register times, and Perez’s gap to the next car — Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin-Honda — was 0.7s. The race then split their afternoons in two: Bottas retired after 15 laps with a fuel system issue, while Perez was lapped three times on the way to 16th.
Even so, Perez framed the result as something the team could build from — before landing the line that cut through the debut-weekend glow. “From now on, obviously the honeymoon is over,” he said. “Now it’s all about [how] we need to do big steps forward. We need to put a plan in the team to move along and close the gap, which I believe we can do.”
It’s a revealing choice of words from a driver who’s been around enough garages to know the danger zones. New teams don’t just need performance; they need direction. The paddock is full of clever people and expensive tools, but without a clear development path and ruthless prioritisation, the weeks can blur into a cycle of small fixes and big promises. Perez’s insistence on a “plan” isn’t corporate fluff — it’s the difference between being an interesting story and becoming a serious competitor.
He also offered a glimpse of what Cadillac’s opening weekend felt like from inside the cockpit. “We started with a lot of issues,” he said, before describing his run to the flag as “a great recovery for the weekend.” There was also a reference to battery trouble that hinted at the kind of teething pains you’d expect when everything — procedures, communication, components, software — is being stressed in anger for the first time.
Bottas, speaking after his early exit, struck a noticeably sunnier tone about the underlying pace. “Overall, we were there. We were racing with some cars,” he said. “We kept Aston behind, not initially falling miles back, so that’s encouraging to see.”
For Cadillac, that’s the sort of micro-benchmark you cling to: not the finishing position, but the moments where the car behaves like a Formula 1 car should. Bottas’ comments also carried the subtext teams in this position often lean on — the idea that the raw ingredients are acceptable, and that cleaning up execution will deliver a meaningful step without needing miracles.
His retirement sounded more messy than dramatic: tyre graining early on, then a sequence of issues that included a steering-wheel change in the pitlane without swapping tyres. Bottas said the steering-wheel intervention helped, suggesting a fault that was affecting drivability rather than outright performance — the kind of thing that can ruin a stint long before it ends a race.
Then came the fuel system problem. He revealed he was told to stop immediately even though he was close to the pit entry. “I asked the team [and said]: ‘I’m almost in the pit lane,’” Bottas explained. “But they said: ‘Stop now.’” That’s not the call you make unless you’re worried about something escalating quickly.
Still, Bottas seemed more interested in the bigger picture than the frustration of a DNF. “I’m still proud of the whole team and I’m very happy to be back,” he said. “This is part of the learning curve. We’ve just got to keep resolving issues and the only way is up from here.”
Between the two drivers, you get a useful snapshot of where Cadillac really is after weekend one. Perez is already pushing the organisation to think like a midfield outfit that expects to develop, not a new entry that hopes to survive. Bottas is looking for the positives in the noise, pointing to those early-race reference points that suggest the car isn’t hopeless when it’s behaving.
Neither is wrong — and Cadillac will probably need both mindsets. The danger after a debut like this isn’t the pace deficit; it’s letting the narrative drift into “nice effort” territory. Perez’s “honeymoon” line was a reminder that, in Formula 1, novelty wears off in about the time it takes to pack up the garage on Sunday night.
Cadillac has a finish in the books, a reliability list to attack, and a hard performance gap to close. Melbourne was the introduction. What happens next is the part that counts.
