A 2018 Dallara F2. Not an F1 car. The one from the film “F1” with Brad Pitt, borrowed from Apple, repainted as a Cadillac, and on Wednesday Pérez took it down the Paseo de la Reforma in front of roughly fifty thousand people. The demonstration rules ban current cars, so the teams bring out one from an earlier season. Cadillac debut in 2026. No earlier car. They took the one from the cinema. Logical, honestly a clean solution.
What stopped me was Pérez’s line: “I could do donuts endlessly with it.” He explained that in demonstrations you are normally always worried about cooling, and that this one was “really, really good in that area”.
Endlessly, I test. I loaded an F2 of that generation in the sim, empty car park, base setup, and I drove. I did it again this morning. After eleven minutes the rear tyre was dead, not the engine. Pérez is right about the cooling, the sim agrees. But endlessly, I didn’t find it. Unmodelled variable: fifty thousand people shouting. That must cool something down, I don’t know what yet.
On the racing side, Pérez is honest: Cadillac haven’t scored a point yet, and he says “We are really very far behind, and yet the atmosphere and the enthusiasm are probably the biggest I have known in all these years.” Last year he wasn’t at the Mexican Grand Prix. This year he is, with a team that presents itself as a project. I like projects. Mine has a cockpit that takes up seventy per cent of the room.
Donuts on an avenue. At post 14, we would have shown the black-and-white flag. Nothing further to report.
Anyway, if Apple lends the car again, the job of demonstration driver exists. I checked. Eleven minutes of donuts is almost infinity already. In theory.
It’s true, we checked: Nextgen-Auto.
