Cadillac deliver Sergio Perez response after 'disappointment' verdict

Cadillac team principal Marcin Budkowski has issued a response to Sergio Perez after the Mexican voiced “disappointment” over the squad's form.

The American outfit joined the grid as an 11th team this year and immediately placed at the back of the field as it got up to speed in the sport.

Following a difficult period in recent events, Perez has stated there has been “a lot of disappointment” within the team due to the lack of progress.

But Budkowski, who took over at the helm of the team from Graeme Lowdon midway through the campaign, stated he informed Perez that he needed to keep his expectations in check.

When asked by media including RacingNews365 if the team has reached a development plateau, Budkowski said: “No. 

“I think you have to put that in perspective with the drivers’ expectations and the reality of the seasonality of F1. 

“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. And I said, 'Well, Checo, I think I need to control the expectations a little bit.'” 

Cadillac has switched focus to 2027 F1 car

While Cadillac has been located at the back of the field thus far, it has also battled several reliability issues, particularly regarding its brakes.

Addressing its struggling form, Budkowski detailed that Cadillac's performance has taken a knock due to applying resources to fix such concerns, as well focus now being switched to the 2027 challenger.

“The reality is we’re in a phase of the season where we’re all working on next year’s car,” he said. 

“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 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.”