Valtteri Bottas sets ‘clear’ Cadillac target for F1 2026 as Australian GP penalty looms

Valtteri Bottas says “clear progress” would represent a “successful” first season for the Cadillac F1 team in F1 2026.

It comes as the former Mercedes driver prepares to serve a five-place grid penalty at this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.

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Having been left without a seat for the 2025 campaign, Bottas has regained a place on the grid for F1 2026 with newcomer Cadillac.

The 10-time race winner partners Sergio Perez, the former Red Bull driver who is also returning to F1 after spending last season on the sidelines, in one of the most experienced driver lineups of F1 2026.

Cadillac is the first brand-new team to arrive on the grid since fellow US outfit Haas made its debut in 2016.

The MAC-26 car, named in honour of 1978 world champion and Cadillac F1 board member Mario Andretti, struggled for pace and reliability during pre-season testing in Bahrain last month.

Bottas says Cadillac has “done an incredible job” to make it to the starting grid in 2026, arguing a positive rate of progress is the aim for this season.

He told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets: “A successful year for us as a team is that we see clear progress.

“It is not really about where we start from, because I think the team has already done an incredible job to be here, to have a car, to be running, so it’s not about where we start from. [It’s] where we end up.

“And seeing that progress – making the car faster, making the car more reliable, becoming better as a team, all these things – we just want to get better and better.

“So I think that’s a good starting point and aim for this year.”

On Cadillac’s pre-season, he added: “We’ve been solving lots of issues, which is normal at this stage.

“The focus is trying to get from that problem-solving phase to actually focusing on performance, because Melbourne will come pretty soon.

“But we’re getting there step by step again.”

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Bottas will serve a five-place grid penalty on his Cadillac debut for an incident during his most recent F1 appearance at the 2024 season finale in Abu Dhabi.

The Finnish driver was hit with a grid penalty for causing a collision with then-Haas driver Kevin Magnussen at the last race of 2024, but was unable to serve his punishment after losing his Sauber seat.

As such, Bottas will finally take a five-place grid drop in Melbourne this weekend.

As revealed by PlanetF1.com last year, the FIA has since moved to tweak the sporting regulations in a bid to avoid a repeat of Bottas’s situation in the future.

From 2026, a grid penalty will be wiped from a driver’s record if it is not served within 12 months of the original offence.

However, because Bottas was penalised before the change to the rules, the Cadillac driver will drop five places in Australia.

An FIA spokesperson told PlanetF1.com in August 2025: “Currently, the [Bottas] penalty will stand as there is no mechanism to retroactively amend the penalty that was applied under the regulations in force at the time.

“The change of regulation is intended to avoid similar anomalous situations in the future.”

Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion, was among those to criticise Bottas’s Australian GP penalty, branding the situation “ridiculous.”

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

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