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How has Cadillac done in its first F1 season? Poorly by the one measure that gets printed, and respectably by most of the others. After 14 of the 23 rounds, Cadillac is 11th and last in the 2026 constructors’ championship on zero points, with a best finish of 13th. It came within one stewards’ decision of scoring at Monaco in June, which is closer than BAR, Virgin or HRT ever got in a full debut year. All figures here were checked on 16 September 2026, three days after the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid.
The short version
Cadillac has scored no points in the first 14 races of its 2026 debut season, sits last of 11 teams, and has retired 11 cars. Its best result is 13th, by Valtteri Bottas in China. Judged against Haas in 2016 that is a poor year. Judged against every other new team since 1999, it is ordinary.
Has Cadillac scored points in F1?
No. Not one, in 28 car starts. The nearest miss was the Monaco Grand Prix on 7 June, where Sergio Perez crossed the line tenth and kept the position for about an hour before the stewards took it off him. Perez had lined up out of position at the final red-flag restart. Video showed the front-right wheel of car 11 sitting outside the painted box, the standard 10-second penalty was applied, and he dropped from tenth to fifteenth. At Monaco in 2026, fifteenth was last.
Fernando Alonso inherited the point and Aston Martin got on the board instead. It was Perez’s third grid offence of the afternoon: he had already served a drive-through for parking in slot 16 when he should have been in 18, and a reprimand for a practice start in the wrong place on his reconnaissance lap. Cadillac’s line on the official Formula 1 results page still reads zero next to all 14 rounds.
How has Cadillac done in its first F1 season next to other new teams?
Here the verdict changes shape. Haas in 2016 is the debut everybody quotes, and it is a poor yardstick. Gene Haas bought a Ferrari power unit, a Ferrari gearbox and rear suspension, and a chassis built by Dallara, which is close to renting a finished midfield car. Cadillac designs and builds its own chassis in Fishers, Indiana, under Nick Chester and John McQuilliam, and buys only the Ferrari 067/6 hybrid.
| Team | Debut season | Points, year one | Constructors’ position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haas | 2016 | 29 | 8th of 11 |
| Toyota | 2002 | 2 | 10th of 11 |
| BAR | 1999 | 0 | 11th of 11 |
| Lotus Racing | 2010 | 0 | 10th of 12 |
| HRT | 2010 | 0 | 11th of 12 |
| Virgin Racing | 2010 | 0 | 12th of 12 |
| Cadillac | 2026 (14 of 23 rounds) | 0 | 11th of 11 |
Four of the six previous debutants in that table finished their first year on nothing at all. Toyota, with a works budget and a purpose-built factory at Cologne, managed two points and tenth. So the honest reading is that Cadillac’s zero is the normal outcome, and Haas is the freak. What separates Cadillac from the 2010 class is where the zero sits: Lotus, Virgin and HRT were routinely several seconds off pole and lapped before half distance, while Cadillac has been racing Williams, Racing Bulls and Aston Martin cars wheel to wheel on Sundays.
Cadillac vs Audi F1 2026 comparison
Audi is the comparison that gets thrown at Cadillac every other week, and it flatters Audi. The four rings are eighth with 17 points, Gabriel Bortoleto responsible for 10 of them including a points finish on debut in Melbourne, Nico Hulkenberg the other seven. On paper that is a new manufacturer beating a new manufacturer by 17 points to nothing.
Except Audi is not a new team. It is the Hinwil operation that has raced without a break since 1993 as Sauber, BMW Sauber and Alfa Romeo, with its own wind tunnel, an established race crew and a working supply chain, wearing different paint and a different engine badge. Cadillac hired most of its people in 2025 and ran its first car at a private Silverstone shakedown in January 2026. Comparing the two as peers is like comparing a new restaurant with a refurbished one.
The reliability numbers behind the zero
Eleven retirements from 28 starts. Bottas has six, Perez five, and only four races have ended with both cars classified. That is a 39 percent failure rate, and it is the single biggest reason there is no point on the board: you cannot inherit a top-ten finish from other people’s chaos if your own car stops first.
The pace picture is better than the results suggest. The two drivers are dead level in qualifying at 7-7 after 14 rounds, and Perez leads the race head-to-head 8-4. Madrid on 13 September was the pattern in miniature. Perez ran 15th, held Yuki Tsunoda’s Racing Bulls behind him, then stayed within a second of Alex Albon’s Williams for a long stint before stopping on lap 33 with what the team called a suspected water system issue. Bottas took damage early, spent the afternoon managing brake temperatures and brought the car home 18th after all 57 laps. In the team’s own race report, Perez still described it as “one of the strongest weekends we’ve had as a team so far”. Running with a Williams at a circuit nobody had raced on before is a different sport from where the 2010 newcomers were.
Why Cadillac swapped team principals in August
On 12 August, Cadillac sacked Graeme Lowdon and appointed Marcin Budkowski, the former Alpine executive director and FIA technical chief. Lowdon was told hours before the announcement went out. Cadillac called it a planned leadership transition. Budkowski’s first race in charge was Zandvoort on 23 August, and he had toured the factory for the first time two days earlier.
What he said when he arrived is more useful than the timing. “Yes, there are glitches. Yes, there are reliability issues that maybe are not the level you expect from a Formula 1 team,” he told Formula1.com before the Dutch Grand Prix, before drawing the distinction that explains the whole season: “The decisions you make in wartime are different to the decisions you make in peacetime.” Lowdon built a race team from nothing against a fixed deadline and took shortcuts to make the grid. Budkowski’s job is to unpick them.
Can Cadillac score in the last nine rounds?
Possible, though not on raw pace. Perez put a number on it in July: “At the moment, the gap is too big to make it up. I believe that after summer, if we are able to find half a second to eight tenths, it’s going to be there.” Bottas was blunter, saying the team would “either need to make a big step or get lucky”.
Luck is the more likely route, and the remaining calendar supplies it. Round 15 is Baku on Saturday 26 September, and if you want the reason the race moved off Sunday, we covered the Azerbaijan Grand Prix schedule separately. Round 16 is the Bahrain Grand Prix, which keeps its name but runs at Sepang in Malaysia on 4 October after the Sakhir and Jeddah rounds were cancelled. Then come Singapore, Austin, Mexico City, Interlagos, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Baku, Singapore and Las Vegas are three of the highest-attrition circuits on the calendar, and 2026 cars have a new variable working in a small team’s favour: the energy management rules, including the manual override system, have produced more scrappy restarts and more cars running out of deployment at the wrong moment. Mexico City on 1 November is also Perez’s home race, on the weekend the crowd will care most.
The bigger clock is the one running to 2029, when General Motors becomes a full power unit supplier and Cadillac stops buying Ferrari hybrids. Ferrari covers 2026 and 2027. Everything the team does now is aimed at that handover, which is why the zero matters less than it looks. While Cadillac hunts a single point, the 2026 title fight at the front is already down to arithmetic. That gap is the one Cadillac has four more years to close.
FAQ
Who drives for Cadillac F1 in 2026?
Sergio Perez in car 11 and Valtteri Bottas in car 77, both returning after a year out of a race seat. Cadillac announced the pair on 26 August 2025 and picked experience over youth: 16 wins and 106 podiums between them, and more than 550 race starts. After 14 rounds they are tied 7-7 in qualifying.
What are Cadillac’s F1 2026 results so far?
Zero points from 14 rounds and last place in the constructors’ championship as of 16 September 2026. The best finish is Bottas’s 13th at the Chinese Grand Prix on 15 March. Perez has twice finished 14th, in Barcelona and at Silverstone. The team has 11 retirements from 28 starts, with only four races completed by both cars.
Is Cadillac’s debut worse than Haas’s in 2016?
Yes, on points. Haas scored 29 and finished eighth, the best new-team debut of the century. But Haas ran a Dallara-built chassis with a Ferrari gearbox and rear suspension, while Cadillac designs and builds its own chassis in Indiana. Against BAR, Lotus, HRT and Virgin, who all scored nothing in year one, Cadillac’s season is unremarkable rather than a failure.
When does Cadillac get its own engine?
2029. General Motors was approved as an F1 power unit supplier and is developing a V6 hybrid at a dedicated facility in Concord, North Carolina, backed by a stated 150 million dollar investment. Cadillac runs customer Ferrari 067/6 units in 2026 and 2027. Team CEO Dan Towriss has said the engine programme is running ahead of schedule.
About this article: standings, points and finishing positions were checked on 16 September 2026 against the official Formula 1 results pages and RacingNews365’s post-Madrid standings. Quotes come from Formula1.com interviews with Marcin Budkowski, Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas, and from Cadillac’s own Spanish Grand Prix race report. Historical debut-season figures were taken from Wikipedia’s season articles and cross-checked against Formula1points.com.