{"id":256633,"date":"2026-05-03T14:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T14:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/256633\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T14:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T14:13:09","slug":"cadillac-felt-like-a-different-car-in-f1-miami-gp-qualifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/256633\/","title":{"rendered":"Cadillac felt \u201clike a different car\u201d in F1 Miami GP qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valtteri Bottas<\/a> was upbeat following qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix because his Cadillac felt \u201clike a different car\u201d compared with previous rounds\u00a0in the 2026 Formula 1 season.<\/p>\n

It has been a testing start to Cadillac\u2019s debut campaign, as it is one of two teams alongside Aston Martin yet to score a point with the season now on its fourth race weekend in Miami.<\/p>\n

Cadillac has usually been between two to four seconds off the pace in Q1 this year, and although that continued into qualifying for Sunday\u2019s grand\u00a0prix, Bottas could see the potential.<\/p>\n

It comes after the American outfit brought nine different upgrades to its first home race, leading to Bottas qualifying 20th – 2.976s off the quickest Q1 time – though he will start 19th due to Isack Hadjar\u2019s disqualification<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could see that some things were not performing as they should in my car and now it was a lot better,\u201d said the Cadillac driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like a different car so I was actually struggling a little bit with the balance because of that but in a positive way, because I gained some rear grip in this session. So hopefully that helps tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottas is therefore confident that Cadillac has made progress despite still being up to two seconds off the Q2 pace.<\/p>\n

\"Valtteri <\/p>\n

Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Brett Farmer \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

When asked if the team has made a step forward, the veteran replied: \u201cYeah, I think so. Positions are still the same than before, but I think the gap is a bit closer to many other teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I think we’re getting there step by step but we’re still understanding, we still need to understand better many things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottas qualified one spot and three tenths above team-mate Sergio Perez<\/a>, who thinks Cadillac could have beaten Aston Martin – the gap was at least five tenths – had he produced a clean lap.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a much better run yesterday than today,\u201d said Perez. \u201cWe did a lot of changes obviously today, which I think we probably took a step back and then qualifying for me was very messy, missing the second lap, which was my mistake pressing the wrong button.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the third lap I had a massive\u00a0overdelivery as I was braking into [Turn] 14 and I just went straight, so I lost that lap as well unfortunately.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we could have been very close to Fernando [Alonso], if not ahead. But yeah, we certainly looked a lot more competitive yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Stuart Codling<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valtteri Bottas was upbeat following qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix because his Cadillac felt \u201clike a different…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[110130,110073,31514,123,31515,125,124,111488,111487],"class_list":["post-256633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-cadillac-f1-team","tag-f1-miami-grand-prix-2026","tag-formula-1","tag-miami","tag-miami-gp","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-valtteri-bottas","tag-valtteri-bottas-cadillac-felt-u201clike-a-different-caru201d-in-f1-miami-gp-qualifying"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}