Bottas confirms Cadillac will soon switch focus to 2027 F1 car

Cadillac prepares to move on from its debut car

Valtteri Bottas has confirmed that Cadillac will soon bring development of its 2026 Formula 1 car to a close and redirect its resources towards next year’s challenger.

Cadillac joined the grid this season after several years of preparation and, as expected, has largely occupied the rear of the field. Bottas and fellow F1 veteran Sergio Perez have nevertheless played an important role in guiding the new team’s early development, using their feedback to help establish a clearer direction for the car.

The team still has further performance-related parts in the pipeline, but Bottas said Cadillac’s focus will soon have to shift completely to its next project.

“We still have something coming performance-wise, but no magic, nothing huge,” Bottas told media. “So obviously, there is a point that we need to shift our focus 100 per cent for next year, which is coming soon.”

The decision reflects the reality of Cadillac’s position in the development race. With established teams continuing to introduce their final upgrades, the opportunity for a major late-season leap is becoming increasingly limited. Bottas believes progress remains possible, but the scale of those gains will be restricted.

“It means that we can still make progress, but big steps are more challenging to make because everyone is still bringing their last upgrades,” he added.

Small upgrades provide a positive signal

Cadillac has successfully brought improvements to the car through the first half of the campaign. Those upgrades even allowed it to move ahead of Aston Martin in the pecking order before Aston Martin responded with a strengthened package at the most recent race in Hungary.

For Bottas, the significance lies less in Cadillac’s current ranking than in the consistency of its development process. Every part introduced so far has delivered a performance benefit — an encouraging sign for a team still building its Formula 1 operation from the ground up.

“Everything we brought to the car has made it quicker, has made it better, so that’s really positive for a new team,” he said. “It’s not a guarantee in F1 that the parts that you put in the car actually work. That’s promising for the future.”

Bottas acknowledged that Cadillac’s gains have not been dramatic, but said the team has clearly moved forward through a series of smaller improvements. He also pointed to the gap with Aston Martin as evidence that the approach is working when rivals are not upgrading at the same rate.

“That has come from these small improvements,” Bottas concluded. The next major test will be whether those lessons can be transferred into Cadillac’s 2027 car — a project that will now become the team’s central priority. The role of Perez in Cadillac’s development is also part of a wider story explored in Sergio Perez’s account of his move to Cadillac.