Valtteri Bottas wants Cadillac to stop congratulating itself for simply existing. Twelve rounds into its debut season, F1’s newest team still has not scored a single point, and the Finn’s latest message to his own outfit amounts to: nice try, now actually do something.
It is a tidy bit of positioning from a driver whose team just sacked its team principal mid-season. Bottas can talk about mentality all he likes, but the numbers do the talking here, and right now they say nothing at all.
Zero Points, Plenty of Excuses
Cadillac’s best result remains Bottas’ 13th place in China, back near the start of the year. Since then the MAC-26 has gone backwards relative to the rest of the field, with Aston Martin, a team that started the season slower, now comfortably ahead. Cadillac sits bottom of the constructors’ table with 0 points, the only team in the entire field yet to register a single one.
Reliability has not helped. Brake issues and overheating have plagued the car through the year, and neither Bottas nor Sergio Perez has been able to disguise that the team is currently going backwards rather than forwards. Perez, too, remains on zero points, meaning both of Cadillac’s drivers occupy the foot of the standings alongside their team.
That backdrop is exactly why CEO Dan Towriss pulled the trigger on team principal Graeme Lowdon during the summer break, replacing him with Marcin Budkowski, previously Alpine’s technical chief and head of aerodynamics at McLaren. Swapping a management figure for an engineer mid-season is not the move of a team that thinks everything is fine.
Bottas Tries to Have It Both Ways
Asked about the apparent gap between Cadillac’s upbeat public messaging and Budkowski’s more sober internal assessment of where the team is struggling, Bottas did not exactly clear things up, but he did not dodge it either.
“I’m honestly a bit of both. I think we’ve done really well. I think we’ve also surprised many people in that we’ve actually been able to race. But at the same time, there are always things we can do better.” – Valtteri Bottas
Fine, both things can be true. Getting a brand-new team onto the grid and finishing races is genuinely hard, and Cadillac has managed that much. But ‘we turned up and the car didn’t fall apart’ is a low bar for a manufacturer with the resources Cadillac is supposed to have behind it, and Bottas knows it, hence the rest of his answer.
“We need to improve. We need to get closer to the midfield. We need to start seeing progress on the timing sheet, not just in the other areas; that’s the mentality that we need.” – Valtteri Bottas
That line about progress needing to show up on the timing sheet and not just in the other areas is the closest Bottas gets to publicly admitting the obvious: Cadillac has been better at press releases than at lap times.
Satisfaction as the Enemy
Bottas leaned into the idea that contentment is the real threat to Cadillac’s progress, not the lack of results themselves, as reported by RacingNews365.
“We can’t be satisfied if we start just being happy with what we’ve done and being satisfied; then there’s no progress. So that’s the name of the game again. We want more, and that’s how the results will come eventually.” – Valtteri Bottas
It is a fair enough philosophy in the abstract. The trouble is that “wanting more” has never once translated into an actual points finish this season, and eleven races remain before this campaign is filed away as a winless, pointless debut year. Wanting is not the same as delivering, and Cadillac’s rivals further down the grid, like Williams and Audi, have both found a way to convert effort into actual points on the board.
Why Budkowski, and Why Now
Bottas was diplomatic, as you would expect from a driver whose new boss might be reading every word, but there was substance behind the platitudes about Budkowski’s arrival.
“One reason for the change was to have a technical person in this position, and he knows a lot about the sport. He’s seen a lot, and will just bring a different perspective and view to the team. I can’t predict the future, but it can be a good thing, and time will tell. He’s got all my support for his new role, and I’m definitely welcoming him in.” – Valtteri Bottas
Reading between the lines, that is Bottas politely conceding that whatever Lowdon was doing was not solving Cadillac’s actual problem, which is a car that is not fast enough and does not stay together reliably. Bringing in an engineering mind rather than another commercial or operational leader suggests Towriss agrees with that diagnosis.
Time Is Running Out to Prove the Point
Cadillac’s story so far has been about arrival, not performance, and Bottas’ comments make clear even the drivers know the novelty of simply being on the grid has worn off. There are 11 races left this season, starting with this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix at Monza, and every one of them is now a chance either to finally break the duck or to confirm that this is simply where a new team sits in its first year.
Budkowski’s appointment buys Cadillac some patience from the outside, since replacing a team boss with a technical specialist at least signals the right diagnosis. But diagnosis is not a cure, and Bottas’ talk of mentality will mean nothing if Cadillac is still searching for its first point when the season ends. Wanting more is easy. Getting it, on this evidence, is the part Cadillac has not worked out yet.
