Sergio Perez told Formula1.com he had stayed with the Williams cars and the Audi for the whole first stint, helped by the overtake mode, before the car ran out of straight-line speed late in the race, too much drag. Fourteenth, no points, and by his own account one of his best weekends.
I did it again this morning. Baku, a car heavy with drag, overtake mode down the straight. In the corner you tuck in behind the Williams, it’s clean. Then the straight arrives, and it doesn’t end. You’re in the tow, you’ve got the mode, and you still lose four kilometres an hour by the end of it. At that point, I reset. He couldn’t. He carried on in fourteenth, and he says he drove at a high level. I believe him: through the corners, I checked, he leaves nothing on the table. The problem is the air. Nobody drives the air. Two thousand four hundred laps of Spa, and I know the Kemmel straight would do exactly the same. In theory.
Qualified twentieth, Perez had received a three-place grid penalty for impeding another driver. He had also posted his best free practice sessions of the season at Baku, a circuit he won in 2021 and 2023 with Red Bull.
According to him, Cadillac remains one to two seconds off the pace needed to fight for points. No major upgrades are planned before the end of the season; he is banking on progress in how the team operates day to day. The outfit, in its debut season, still has no points, and its best result remains Valtteri Bottas’s thirteenth place in China.
Nathan sent Cadillac a message offering his services as a simulator driver. The job exists, he checked. No reply yet.
It’s true, we checked: Formula1.com.
