Cadillac endure troubled Friday in Austria despite upgrade promise

Credit: Formula One

Cadillac F1 Team came to Spielberg with momentum. An extensive upgrade package, hopes of genuine midfield contention, and two drivers ready to benchmark their progress — only for Friday to slip away before either could properly get to work.

Sergio Pérez's day was derailed almost before it began. An electrical fault in Free Practice 1 brought him to a halt on track, triggering a red flag late in the session and restricting him to just 14 laps. FP2 was worse: two laps before the same gremlin returned, and his afternoon was over.

"It's been a bit unfortunate," Pérez said. "I want to start with the positive, which is that we seem to be closer. Valtteri had a good session this morning — we could see a bit of light there. Unfortunately, running was very limited for me today."

He had been building towards something before the problems struck. "I was on a good lap until I had these issues this morning with my first sector," he said. "But you never know, unfortunately."

With the root cause still unidentified heading into Saturday, Cadillac face a substantial overnight rebuild. "We don't really know what is the issue on my side," Pérez said, "so we're going to be changing pretty much everything on the electrical side to make sure that for tomorrow we can have a clean day, because we have a lot of work ahead of us."

The limited mileage also meant the upgrade package remained largely unevaluated from his side of the garage. "I think it's hard to compare anything," he acknowledged. "Hopefully tomorrow we are able to find out where we really are and we can have a much straighter day."

Bottas offered a more useful morning, his FP1 running giving the team something to work with. But the afternoon turned against him too — an overheating issue forcing him to a crawl on track, with sparks trailing from beneath the car, leaving him with just six laps in FP2.

Chief Technical Officer Nick Chester was measured in his assessment of the day. "It was a tricky day but we brought a big package for both cars," he said. "The indications we had from FP1 were actually we've made a bit of a step with it, so that's good performance-wise — and now we've got a whole load of work tonight to sort out other issues, but that's all part of the fun."

Chester pointed to recent near-misses as reason for optimism. The team came within six-hundredths at Monaco, and were similarly close in Miami. "I think we've got a good shout at it," he said, "but we need a nice, trouble-free FP3."

Saturday morning is now the line. The data from Bottas's FP1 suggests the upgrade has landed — but with Pérez's car being rebuilt from the electrical system up, Cadillac will need a clean run in Free Practice 3 to find out exactly where they stand.