As the Formula 1 grid arrived at historic Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix, the word from Cadillac was that the sport’s newest team wanted to continue their “progress” from the first two races of the season.
If Friday’s pair of practice sessions are any indication, Cadillac will meet that goal.
The team enjoyed a “good day” over the first two hours of practice, thanks in part to a series of upgrades F1’s newest team brought to the circuit. In particular, Valtteri Bottas called Friday the “best day we’ve had so far this season” in the team’s post-practice report. Bottas completed 52 laps over the two sessions, finishing FP1 in P20, and FP2 in P18.
“First of all, it’s fun to be driving at my favorite track once again,” said Bottas. “On my side of the garage, today was the best day we’ve had so far this season, with not a single issue. It meant we could completely focus on performance, fine tuning the balance and getting on with setup work. I feel we’ve gained a bit of load and stability with the upgrades this week, which gives me confidence that we’re going to see progress.
“We’re still lacking in areas compared to the top teams, but at least the direction is right and now we know, again, where we need to keep focusing on. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.”
On the other side of the garage it was a bit more complicated for Sergio Pérez, as an incident with Alexander Albon at the end of FP1 complicated his program in FP2 as his start was delayed. Still, he found the positives after practice, where he completed 32 laps over the two sessions, finishing FP1 in P19, and FP2 in P20.
“This morning we got through the majority of the program and the car felt pretty balanced,” said Pérez. “I missed a run at the end of the session with the incident with Alex [Albon] which then impacted the rest of the day as we were late out in the afternoon. When I did go out, we had another issue with the energy deployment and lost a lot of lap time. It hasn’t been the most straightforward day and it’s difficult to draw many conclusions, but we’ll look into everything from Valtteri as well and have a cleaner day tomorrow.”
Executive engineer Pat Symonds called Friday a “pretty good day” for the team.
“Today was a pretty good day,” said Symonds. “As we get more races under our belt we are really settling into a good rhythm. We brought some small upgrades to the car this weekend and, while we are still analyzing the data, both drivers seem happy with the balance of the car. There was a little upset after this morning’s collision, which cost us some time getting out in the second practice. Other than that, it was a relatively smooth day and we look forward to more of the same tomorrow, doing the best job we can, snapping away to get up into that midfield.”
Regarding those upgrades, Cadillac brought some tweaks to the diffuser on the MAC-26. As noted in their car presentation submission, the team brought an upgraded diffuser and diffuser fence to Suzuka. The new diffuser fence has a “[l]ower edge detail change,” and the lower profile will reportedly “enhance overall ride hight behavior and improve aerodynamic performance across the operating envelope.”
The new diffuser itself, which has an “[u]pdated central diffuser trailing edge profile,” will “enhance overall performance and increase overall rear aerodynamic load.”
So far, so good.
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