Sergio Perez’s car fell apart during the China Sprint, and he faced more problems in qualifying—yet Cadillac is still hoping to compete with Aston Martin
Sergio Perez had an extremely sobering qualifying session on Saturday in China. While teammate Valtteri Bottas even managed to finish ahead of an Aston Martin, marking a small success for the newcomer, Perez finished dead last with no chance of catching up—nearly 1.5 seconds behind the Finn.
“Unfortunately, qualifying was compromised,” the Mexican lamented after the session. “We were running late, lost a run, and then I had a problem with the deployment that cost us a lot of time, which was very unfortunate.”
Given Bottas’s time, however, he still sees “quite a bit more potential” in the car and hopes “that we can have a good race against the Astons tomorrow and put up a good fight with them.”
However, Cadillac is still facing some issues. According to Perez, they have to push the setup “pretty close to the limit” to try to protect the front left tire, which has also caused problems for some other teams.
In the sprint, Perez could only keep up with the Aston Martins to a limited extent. Despite a late safety car phase, during which the race was restarted with three laps remaining, he finished six seconds behind Stroll.
However, this was also due to a technical incident in which Perez’s hood fell apart on the long back straight without any external impact. “We wanted to reduce drag for the race,” he jokes when asked about the difficulties, but admits that the team still doesn’t know why the car simply fell apart.
This is how Perez’s car finished the sprint race pic.twitter.com/MVAiybr45R — Holiness (@F1BigData) March 14, 2026
However, this is just one in a series of similar issues, as it’s not the first time parts have fallen off the MAC-26—in the past, mirrors, among other things, have simply gone missing. “Of course, it’s still early days for the team,” says Perez, “but we’re learning every day, of course.”
“Hopefully we can finish the race tomorrow with a complete car.”