As Motorsport.com reports, Valtteri Bottas faced yet another brutal end to his afternoon at the Circuit of The Americas, suffering his ninth retirement of the season during Sunday's United States Grand Prix. That is a surprisingly high number for a driver whose pre-2026 DNF rate sat at 11 percent, and eight of those nine failures have been tied directly to technical gremlins. Austin proved to be no different, with a suspected power-unit issue bringing his machine to a halt.
"It's always disappointing not to finish, but it didn't sound great from the engine side, like physically," Bottas said. Cadillac Racing is clearly still fighting to iron out massive reliability and performance flaws, and fixes might not arrive until next year's challenger hits the tarmac.
Unfortunately I think with the timing of the blue flags we lost a lot of race time, because as we pitted we basically went straight into the blue flags,
"I would say it's impossible to get a read on a year like this with so many issues," Bottas added, noting that the team is still facing a steep learning curve while struggling to comprehend some of the failures. He pointed out the hidden battles behind the scenes, mentioning brake management as just one of the many demanding factors the squad has had to deal with.
Despite the mechanical heartbreak, the race offered some rare glimpses of pace. Both cars briefly mixed it up with the Aston Martins and Williams machines before eventually drifting back. Perez finished some 20 seconds behind Fernando Alonso, Alexander Albon, and Carlos Sainz, which marked an actual improvement for the outfit, while Bottas was only five seconds shy of his team-mate at the moment of his retirement.
Perez, however, felt severely compromised by his strategy and the cruel timing of blue flags after pitting on lap 23 and getting lapped on lap 28. "Unfortunately I think with the timing of the blue flags we lost a lot of race time, because as we pitted we basically went straight into the blue flags," the Mexican claimed.
When it came to why the car showed better pace in Texas, the drivers offered different theories. Perez believed the performance was entirely track-dependent, while Bottas credited the weather. "I think today what helped was the cloud cover," Bottas pointed out, noting that cooler conditions masked their struggles with high temperatures. He hopes Mexico could be a bit better, though the forecast currently calls for sunshine and warm temperatures of some 26C ambient alongside a lack of downforce worries at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
