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Sergio Perez and teammate Valtteri Bottas got behind the wheel of Cadillac’s 2026 Formula 1 car for the second time as pre-season testing in Barcelona gets underway.
F1’s 11th team ran a shakedown session at Silverstone before heading to the Circuit de Catalunya. Being an entirely new project, Cadillac are under increased pressure, and it might be getting to them slightly.
‘Whispers’ suggest Cadillac failed to complete a 200km run during a filming day at Silverstone. They appeared to struggle to get strong mileage in their 2026 machine, and that seemed to persist in Barcelona.
Barcelona, Day 1 done 🏁 Who’s catching your eye so far? 👇
Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas both ran on the first day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya. Cadillac and Mercedes were the only teams to use both of their drivers on Monday, with five other outfits taking to the track.
Lap times are irrelevant at this point, but Perez was last of the runners, almost eight seconds down on pacesetter Isack Hadjar. Together, the Mexican and Bottas completed 44 laps, the second-lowest of the day, ahead of Audi.
Sergio Perez felt first day of Barcelona testing was ‘positive’ despite Cadillac suffering ‘a lot of issues’
Speaking after the test with the official F1 YouTube channel, Perez revealed that Cadillac had several problems in Barcelona and that things were ‘too smooth’.
However, he described this as a good thing, as it is key to get any issues out of the way now rather than it happening at the first race of the season in Australia.
“It’s always challenging when there is a massive rule changing, to get laps in is the main objective,” said Perez.
“So, yeah, I mean, we’re just getting some laps on the board, which was promising. We have, I’ll say, a lot of issues today, which is good, it’s our first day, so it’s been positive in that regard.
“You want all the problems to come now and hopefully the next couple of days can be a lot smoother for us.
“Yeah, I think just trying to maximise everything. Everything has been running a little bit too smooth at the moment. just trying to get laps in, which I think is going to be the priority, going into the coming days, that will be the main thing.”
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Cadillac are still on schedule despite problems in testing
With the issue during the filming day at Silverstone and the lack of mileage in Barcelona thus far, it may seem that Cadillac’s start to life in F1 is not looking good.
However, Cadillac are on schedule, as team principal Graeme Lowdon has proven. They have done this by making it to testing in the first place, as there were rumours that they would not make it at all.
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The most important thing, as Perez and Bottas have alluded to, is getting as much mileage and data from the car and their power unit as possible. There have been some encouraging signs coming from their engine supplier.
Cadillac reported ‘decidedly positive’ data to Ferrari from their filming day, despite not completing the amount of kilometres that they had wanted. If they can rack up more miles in the car in Barcelona, and nothing goes wrong with the engine, they will be in a good place.
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