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The Cadillac Formula 1 team has brought upgrades to the Japanese Grand Prix and although Valtteri Bottas doesn’t think they’re a gamechanger, he is still positive about the progress.
Cadillac is making its F1 debut this year and, as expected, it has been a backmarker across the opening two rounds with Bottas and team-mate Sergio Perez out in Q1 of both Melbourne and Shanghai - where they also failed to score a point.
The American outfit is usually at least a few seconds off the pace with some kind of technical issue hitting along the way, but Bottas was left impressed by his smooth Friday at the Japanese Grand Prix.
He finished 20th and 18th in FP1 and FP2, respectively 2.824s and 2.482s off the pace, as Cadillac debuted its latest upgrades with a revised diffuser and diffuser fence.
So when asked if Friday marked Cadillac’s most competitive day yet, Bottas replied: “Yes. It seems like we've closed the gap a bit to, I think, pretty much all the cars ahead. The gap is a bit smaller than before.
“Today, actually, on my side of the garage, for the first time in a race weekend, it was a day that there was not a single issue. We could just completely focus on performance, on the set-up work, and not fixing issues.
“That was good. I think both one-lap pace, race pace, we are still a bit off from Williams, but seem to be ahead of Aston. I feel we've gained a bit of load, a bit of stability. We're still lacking a lot compared to the top teams, but at least the direction is right.
“Now we know, again, where we need to keep focusing on. But yeah, everything works like I expected with the new bits.”
Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac Racing
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Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac Racing
Those thoughts were echoed by Cadillac’s engineering consultant Pat Symonds, who revealed “everything we’re trying to do is just put load on the car”.
“Like most people, we want to make sure that the load on the rear is consistent. So that’s really what a lot of these things are aimed at,” he added.
“We haven’t done a full analysis of everything yet, but the drivers certainly seem to think that the car is quite nicely balanced. So we had a nice balance between high speed and low speed and we had a nice balance between low fuel and high fuel.
“So when you’ve got that, that’s quite a positive thing going forward. So now if we can just get some more load on the car, I think we can start getting into that midfield a bit.”
Although it was a smooth day for Bottas, Perez did endure a troubled FP1 having collided with Alex Albon at the chicane after the Williams driver lunged down the inside.
The Mexican ultimately finished that session in 19th, 0.269s ahead of Bottas, before taking 20th in FP1 where he was 3.556s off leader Oscar Piastri in the McLaren.
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