{"id":553184,"date":"2026-03-22T12:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T12:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/553184\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T12:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T12:16:12","slug":"cadillacs-unexpected-april-f1-break-will-be-quite-beneficial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/553184\/","title":{"rendered":"Cadillac\u2019s unexpected April F1 break will be \u201cquite beneficial\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1\u2019s unexpected April break will be \u201cquite beneficial\u201d to the nascent Cadillac team, Valtteri Bottas<\/a> reckons.<\/p>\n

The Bahrain and Jeddah rounds have been cancelled<\/a> due to the ongoing Iran war, meaning there will be a five-week gap between next week\u2019s Japanese Grand Prix and the Miami race in early May.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s actually quite beneficial for us,\u201d Bottas commented. \u201cWe have more time to sort things out \u2013 because we still have issues, you know, we still haven’t had a trouble-free week \u2013 and also more time to gain more performance. And everyone has been working flat out for months now, so actually maybe for some people to have a bit of a breather as well, this is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Cadillac has indeed suffered from a few mechanical gremlins, with nagging fuel system problems ending Bottas\u2019 Australian GP, impacting Sergio Perez<\/a> in free practice in Melbourne and ruling the Mexican out of sprint qualifying in China. At Albert Park, both drivers lost a mirror.<\/p>\n

On the operational side, Cadillac had the second-slowest pitstops in Melbourne in terms of time spent in the pitlane; it was by far slowest in China, with its benchmark a 25.793s when Perez pitted in the sprint. Every other team was at least 2.6s faster \u2013 except Audi<\/a>, which suffered from a wheelgun failure in its sole pitstop of the weekend.<\/p>\n

\"Sergio <\/p>\n

Sergio Perez, Cadillac Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Dom Gibbons \/ Formula 1 via Getty Images<\/p>\n

But the main area for improvement will obviously be chassis-related. Cadillac opted for safety in terms of design and production deadlines ahead of its F1 debut, which allowed it to shake its maiden car down as early as 16 January \u2013 that\u2019s 19 days earlier than the tardy Williams<\/a> outfit. But there obviously was a trade-off in terms of performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe anticipated, we knew that,\u201d Perez said ahead of the Shanghai weekend. \u201cI mean, this car was done a long time ago. It’s very basic; they had to do it very early, the sign-off. So we knew that the start was always going to be difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially on the aero side, we’re lacking quite a lot of load, especially on the rear end of the car,\u201d Bottas added, \u201cwhich now has kind of boxed us in with this mechanical set-up a little bit, because we just need to do everything we can to protect the rear end. But once we start gaining some more load, then there’s a bit more to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cadillac updated its diffuser and mirror stays for the Chinese round, and there is more to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were planning to have something for almost every race now [before the Middle Eastern rounds were cancelled], so for sure something for Japan and then hopefully something bigger after the spring break,\u201d Bottas said, chuckling at the notion of a \u2018spring break\u2019.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Oleg Karpov and Ronald Vording<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1\u2019s unexpected April break will be \u201cquite beneficial\u201d to the nascent Cadillac team, Valtteri Bottas reckons. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,4228,166103,214624,48,207751,578,208146,576,577,2191,82,1713],"class_list":["post-553184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-cadillac","tag-cadillac-ferrari","tag-cadillacu2019s-unexpected-april-f1-break-will-be-u201cquite-beneficialu201d","tag-canada","tag-chinese-gp","tag-f1","tag-f1-chinese-grand-prix","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sergio-perez","tag-sports","tag-valtteri-bottas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}