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As Cadillac rolled into the Formula 1 summer break, it had failed to score any points during the 2006 campaign. As a first-year team, is that a disappointment? Eleven races in, Cadillac sits 11th and last in the constructors’ standings. That is roughly where the team said it expected to be. As the first brand-new team to join the F1 grid since Haas in 2016, Nobody in the paddock is stunned by that. General Motors and TWG Motorsports received final approval to enter only in March 2025, roughly a year before the lights went out in Melbourne, and no amount of hiring closes a head start that large. The bigger problem has been keeping the car running. According to a report from PlanetF1, Cadillac has nine retirements over the first 11 rounds, a total bettered only by Aston Martin. Brakes accounted for four. On separate weekends, both Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez ended up helping put out fires on their own cars. Suspension failures accounted for three more. Cadillac has gotten both cars to the finish just four times, which costs a young team the one thing it cannot buy: race data. Cadillac F1 Season Hasn’t Yielded Results or Enough Data The Cadillac F1 season pace tells a friendlier story. The MAC-26, named for Mario Andretti and running a customer Ferrari power unit through 2028, has not drifted backward the way most new cars do. Cadillac closed on Aston Martin through the middle of the season and held that ground until Aston rolled out its B-spec chassis in Hungary. The closest they came was Monaco. Perez took the checkered flag in 10th, then lost the position after the race. Aston Martin got the point. “We got (a point) in Monaco but unfortunately [it was] taken from us,” Perez said before the Hungarian Grand Prix. “I believe that after summer, if we are able to find half a second to eight tenths, it’s going to be there.” Both hires have justified themselves. Perez holds a 6-5 qualifying edge and a 3-1 sprint lead. Bottas lost a year of racing but kept all his one-lap pace. Does the Cadillac F1 season include a driver switch or backup plan? Related: 4 Takeaways as Formula 1 Hits the Summer Break Does Cadillac Have a Backup Plan? The backup plan has not materialized. Colton Herta went to Formula 2 this season to earn the super license points an F1 seat requires. It has not gone well. He sits 16th in the standings with one top-five finish and six top-10s in 18 starts, and most of that came in the first three rounds. The FIA threshold was a top-eight championship finish. That is gone. Herta remains Cadillac’s test driver, and both Perez and Bottas are believed to hold options for 2027. The results themselves stay modest. Bottas took 13th in China. That is still the best Cadillac has managed. Perez has a pair of 14ths, Barcelona and Silverstone. “I’m not looking at the points situation,” Bottas said. “Of course, we want to score but for that we would either need to make a big step or get lucky at the moment.” Cadillac board member Mario Andretti said back in March that he expects the team competing for top-10 finishes by season’s end. Year one was always about whether the operation could function at a Formula 1 level, and it mostly has. The harder test starts now, with a 2027 car to develop and a GM power unit due for 2029. Related: F1 Cadillac Brings Special ‘Stars and Stripes’ Livery for Miami Home Race Tap Here To Add Sportsnaut As A Trusted Source on Google