Formula 1 does not do soft landings, and Cadillac is learning that the hard way. Eight races into the American marque's debut season, the new team sits eleventh and last in the constructors' championship with zero points. Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas occupy the bottom two rungs of the drivers' table — 21st and 20th respectively — both still blank, both watching the pack disappear up the road.
On paper, this was supposed to be the experienced entry. Cadillac skipped the temptation of a rookie project and stacked its cockpit with two of the most decorated hands available: a six-time Grand Prix winner in Perez and a ten-time winner and former title runner-up in Bottas. Between them they have shared garages with Verstappen and Hamilton, contended for wins, stood on countless podiums. None of that pedigree has bought them a single point through Round 8.
Last on the sheet, often not on it at all
The raw numbers are unforgiving. Every other team on the grid has scored. Even Aston Martin, mired in its own miserable campaign, has one point on the board through Alonso. Audi has two. Cadillac has none — and the frequent retirements have meant that on plenty of Sundays the pair have not even been around at the flag to fight for the scraps. A first-year car that cannot reliably finish cannot learn, and cannot bank the odd 10th place that keeps a team's morale — and its constructors' tally — off the floor.
Context matters, and the context is that 2026 has been a savage year to arrive. Mercedes has turned the grid into a private playground, winning seven of eight and racking up 302 constructor points. Rookie Kimi Antonelli has been the sensation of the season with five wins, four of them back-to-back from China to Canada, and a commanding 40-point lead over teammate George Russell. Russell has added two more victories. Behind that juggernaut, Ferrari found a Hamilton win in Barcelona, and even historically strong operations are hurting — Red Bull has collapsed to fourth and Max Verstappen is winless, while McLaren has failed to win at all. If teams with title-winning DNA are struggling to keep pace, a brand-new outfit was always going to be swimming against the tide.
The long game
Nobody sane expected Cadillac to gatecrash the podium party of a Gasly-in-Monaco afternoon in year one. But zero points and a habit of not making the finish is a harsher opening chapter than even the pessimists sketched out. The margin between building credibility and building a reputation for unreliability is thin, and right now the reliability story is writing itself in a way the team will not enjoy.
Silverstone comes next on 5 July, the British Grand Prix, another proving ground on a season that has offered Cadillac nothing but hard lessons. Perez and Bottas were hired precisely for weekends like the ones ahead — to drag a young project toward respectability through experience and mileage. So far the mileage has been the problem. Until the cars start reaching the checkered flag, the points column will keep reading the same brutal number: zero.