Valtteri Bottas sees clear Cadillac progress amid challenging first F1 season

Valtteri Bottas says Cadillac has made encouraging progress in its maiden Formula 1 season despite reliability issues and a lack of points

Cadillac Formula 1 driver Valtteri Bottas has already seen progress with the newly formed team in the first half of its maiden season in the championship.

Cadillac joined F1 in 2026 as its 11th team with the experienced driver line-up of former Mercedes driver Bottas and former Red Bull driver Sergio Perez. While it is yet to score its first point in the series and has suffered reliability issues and multiple retirements, Bottas has argued that there has been some good progress made within the team.

"We knew there were going to be challenges," Bottas told F1.com. "There have been a few races that we haven't finished with technical issues. We knew that it was possible and that is part of the learning curve.

"The main thing is we just need to learn from those and move on. But otherwise, honestly, no big surprises.

"I knew that we could improve throughout the year – we can see we have done. We’ve been able to pick up the pace [and] we've been able to get the car more reliable.

"How the team operates, we're getting better and better. It's been a great journey so far, but there's still a lot of work to do."

Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

The Finnish driver added: "There were only a couple of people in the team when I joined that I knew from the past. Almost every team member you've had to build this relationship of how you can work best with him or her and how to get the most out of the people around you as well.

"That's been a lot of work, but that's what it is when you start a new team. But again, this has been getting so much better.

"I'm still getting to know the team better and better, the people I work with. [It’s the] same with Checo, actually. Everything has started off really well already and it's nice to work with him."

This week, Cadillac announced that Graeme Lowdon had been replaced as team principal, with former Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski stepping into the role.