Sergio Perez’s Monaco weekend managed to find new ways to unravel even after the chequered flag, with the FIA confirming a formal reprimand for a pre-race breach to compound an already bruising afternoon for Cadillac.
The Mexican, still trying to stitch momentum together in his first season with the American marque, was hauled in front of the stewards after failing to follow the race director’s instructions during the pre-race reconnaissance laps. Perez admitted he carried out a practice start in the wrong position, and the officials duly reached for the rulebook: reprimand issued, logged as his first of the 2026 season.
On paper, it’s the lightest of slaps — no points, no time, no grid drop. In reality, it’s another avoidable mark against a driver and team who can’t really afford “small” mistakes right now, especially at a place like Monaco where procedure is everything and margins are measured in inches and radio messages.
Perez had already lived through a messy sequence of events in the race itself. He took the flag 10th on the road in Monte Carlo, only for his result — and what would have been Cadillac’s first-ever point in Formula 1 — to be wiped away by penalties.
First came a drive-through for lining up in the wrong grid slot for the original start, a situation triggered after Gabriel Bortoleto’s Audi was set to start from the pit lane. Then, after a second standing start, Perez found himself investigated again for being out of position. That one was dealt with post-race, the stewards adding a 10-second time penalty that dropped him from 10th to 15th in the final classification. The point was gone, and the optics were worse.
The pre-race reprimand only underlined the theme: too many process errors on a weekend where Cadillac desperately needed a clean run. The stewards’ wording was blunt, as these documents usually are, noting that they heard from Perez and a team representative and reviewed data, video and in-car footage before concluding: “The driver admitted that he had made a practice start in the wrong position.”
Perez, speaking afterwards, framed it as a simple breakdown in communication rather than anything wilful.
“There was a miscommunication that we had,” he said. “That was just a pure miscommunication with my team.”
It’s an explanation that will land with anyone who’s spent time listening to pre-race radio in Monaco — the constant recalculation of gaps, the stress of brake temperatures, the dance between finding space and not annoying anyone behind. Still, it’s exactly the kind of administrative slip teams drill out of themselves because the penalties are so disproportionate to the “crime”.
And while a reprimand doesn’t move him down the grid next time, it does edge him towards the five-reprimand threshold that triggers an automatic 10-place grid penalty. Perez is only on one for now, but the system is designed to punish repeat offenders, and the sport has a habit of turning “it’s only a reprimand” into “why are we even in this situation?” remarkably quickly.
What made Monaco sting, though, was that Perez and Cadillac felt they’d earned something from the chaos — not least because, by his account, the car was in no shape to be fighting for anything.
He revealed there was a point where retiring was discussed, such were the issues with vibrations and managing the car through the race.
“It was a very difficult race for us,” Perez said. “Very, very tough out there with the vibrations, with the brakes, with the engine.
“We thought at some point to retire the car, but we didn’t give up. We stayed out and the race gave us a new opportunity and we took it.”
Perez described a day of heavy management, including lift-and-coast, and painted the picture of a driver doing the unglamorous work Monaco sometimes demands — hanging on, keeping it out of the walls, waiting for the race to come to you. He even pointed to one crucial moment that, in his mind, salvaged the afternoon.
“I actually had a very poor start, but the Lap 1 at the restart was incredible. It made us come back and that was really what matters,” he said.
And yet, for all that graft, Monaco ended with the kind of official paperwork that doesn’t care how hard the car was to drive.
Perez also pushed back on the idea he’d gained anything by being out of position, arguing there was no benefit and that camera angles can mislead.
“We looked at different angles. It’s hard to prove from one angle,” he said. “When you look from one angle, it’s clear. But then from another, it isn’t that clear.
“Regardless of that, we got P10 on track. We had no benefit [to achieve] that.”
As for the earlier grid-slot confusion — the one that triggered the drive-through — Perez insisted it wasn’t obvious from the cockpit in the moment, not helped by brake issues as he rolled into place.
“No. It was not so obvious,” he said. “I was having issues with the brakes and, as I was getting to my grid slot, I had a bit of shade [on the track]. It wasn’t that clear.”
There was a telling line amid the frustration, though, one that hinted at the mood inside Cadillac despite the penalties and the missed point.
“We didn’t give up and it’s something great to see from everyone in Cadillac,” Perez said. “We had one of the worst Monaco races I ever remember. We just had everything [go wrong] and we didn’t give up.”
That resilience is a nice narrative. But the sharper truth is Monaco didn’t just expose the car’s weaknesses; it exposed how ruthlessly F1 punishes the operational ones too. For a new team trying to build credibility and a driver trying to reset his trajectory, tightening up the basics might be the most important upgrade they bring to the next weekend.
