Perez concern addressed as Cadillac makes F1 2027 decision

Jamie Woodhouse 21 Sep 2026 12:06 PM

Sergio Perez at the wheel for Cadillac at the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix

Cadillac F1 driver Sergio Perez

Cadillac F1 team principal Marcin Budkowski confirmed that the bulk of the team’s resources have been shifted to the F1 2027 car.

It comes after Cadillac driver Sergio Perez expressed disappointment over the rate of progress in the team’s first Formula 1 season. Budkowski said that Perez wasted little time in querying Cadillac’s plans for the here and now. While next season has become the primary development focus, Budkowski explained that this does not mean the team cannot improve in 2026.

Cadillac focusing development on F1 2027

Cadillac is still waiting for its first point in the sport, having arrived as a new entrant from F1 2026.

In August, Graeme Lowdon was replaced by Marcin Budkowski, the former Alpine F1 executive director, as team principal.

The American squad boasts an experienced driver line-up with a combined 16 grand prix wins behind them, in the shape of Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas.

During a recent Beyond the Grid podcast appearance, Perez spoke of “a lot of disappointment” within the team as “we haven’t been developing. We haven’t been improving.” Perez argued that as a new Formula 1 team built from scratch, improving “is what we should be doing, like every time.”

As such, the Mexican racer felt that there had been “a bit of stalling” in recent races.

Budkowski was asked about his driver’s comments during the team representatives press conference at the Spanish Grand Prix.

In terms of upgrades coming to the MAC-26 cars, that particular pipeline is “slowly drying out,” with F1 2027 now the focus in that regard.

However, the Pole explained how Perez can still see the steps forward which he craves.

“I think you have to put that in perspective with the driver’s expectations and the reality of the seasonality of Formula 1,” Budkowski told PlanetF1.com and others in response to Perez.

“Before I even started, after my appointment was announced, I had a quick chat with both drivers, and Sergio asked me, ‘What are you going to do for Zandvoort?’ Which is a week after I started. I said, ‘Well, Checo, I think I need to control expectations a little bit.’

“The reality is we’re in a phase of the season where we are working on next year’s car. We’ve switched the resources mostly to next year. We have a development pipeline that’s slowly drying out.

“A lot of our resources have also been, unfortunately, busy fixing our reliability issues rather than working on performance items.

“So naturally, the development is plateauing in this phase of the season.

“But I think on our side, we have a lot of potential through fixing the reliability, fixing the operational side, fixing the quality of the car. There’s a performance there that we can still extract this year.

“But our focus needs to be on next year’s car. And I think everybody will tell you this up and down the pit lane.”

Budkowski spoke of “a number of shortcuts” having inevitably been taken in getting Cadillac on the F1 2026 grid. But, he sees many reasons for optimism as he tackles the short and long-term tasks to move this outfit in the right direction.

“It’s been an intense few weeks,” he said of Cadillac F1 life since succeeding Lowdon. “It certainly feels more than three-and-a-half weeks. It feels like three-and-a-half months, to be honest.

“But it’s been good. I’ve seen a lot of good things in the team, and especially it’s pretty impressive given the time they had to build the team and the conditions with the entry and everything. So there’s a lot of good things.

“There’s no legacy compared to some other teams. There’s a lot of open-minded, constructive discussions going on.

“But there’s also a number of shortcuts that have been taken, which is inevitable when you build a new team in such a time. It’s about working in some areas that need more attention.

“I mean, in the short term, obviously reliability. We’ve seen we’ve struggled with that in some areas, and just getting the operational excellence to the level it should be, which is not a level of a top team as of today, but that’s understandable.

“Longer term, there’s some clear priorities that are emerging for what we need to do and what we need to do better, mostly to improve our performance and our pace. But I’m not going to share these ones with you.”