Cadillac's first season: what the numbers actually say

Judging a new Formula 1 team by its championship position tells you almost nothing. Cadillac sits eleventh with eleven points, which is exactly where a first-year entry with a customer power unit was always going to sit.

The useful numbers are elsewhere. In Bahrain the car qualified an average of 1.9 seconds off pole. In Madrid that gap was 0.9 seconds. No retirement this season has been caused by a component Cadillac designed itself.

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Experience bought deliberately

Signing Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas cost the team more than two rookies would have, and gave it something it could not buy anywhere else: two drivers who can describe what a race-winning car feels like.

When Valtteri tells us the rear is not doing what he expects, we know it is the car, not the driver. That is worth an entire test programme.

Team principal Graeme Lowdon has been careful to manage expectations in public while pushing hard internally. The target for 2027, when General Motors' own power unit arrives, is the midfield rather than the back row.