It's Downforce, Not Power.
lost in the curves
vs midfield reference
lost on the straights
(grew at Miami)
pace deficit that lives
in the corner phase
where Cadillac is
slower than the midfield
Four races into 2026, Cadillac's deficit splits roughly half-and-half between corners and straights — Miami pulled the corner gap to just 1.2 km/h at the apex while the straight-line gap reappeared. The aero work is paying off; the PU side may be where the next gain comes from.
Through the first four 2026 races — Australia, China, Japan, Miami (Saudi and Bahrain were cancelled) — Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas's median fastest-lap pace falls behind the Aston Martin / Williams / Haas midfield by an average of 1.01 s in the corners and 0.97 s on the straights. Of the 62 corners across those four circuits, Cadillac is slower in 46 of them. The story shifted at Miami — for the first time, the mid-corner-min gap narrowed to 1.2 km/h of the midfield and the corner-time loss pulled under a second a lap. The straight-line deficit reappeared at Miami too, suggesting a setup trade rather than a base-car change. ~51 % of the season's lap-time deficit lives in the corner phase — a clean 50/50 split with the straight-line side after Miami flipped the balance.
How We Read the Telemetry
A car short on downforce shows a very specific footprint in lap data. It can't carry mid-corner speed, so it loses time at the apex. Its rear axle is grip-limited on exit, so the driver waits longer to put the throttle back down. And its peak lateral acceleration ceiling is lower, because alat = v² · κ — for a given corner radius, the maximum cornering speed is set by how much grip the aerodynamic and mechanical setup can extract.
We pull telemetry for every driver's top-5 fastest clean laps via FastF1, resample onto a uniform 5 m grid, and detect corners as local peaks in track curvature. For each corner we compute four signatures: mid-corner minimum speed, corner-vs-straight time differential, throttle re-application distance from the apex, and peak lateral G capability. We then compare Cadillac (PER + BOT) against a midfield reference set — Aston Martin, Williams, Haas — the teams Cadillac is realistically racing.
The headline visualization is the median Cadillac lap vs the median midfield-reference lap, at each of the four races. Layer the two speed traces on top of each other, then integrate the speed delta metre by metre, and the running cumulative loss tells you exactly where on the lap the time is being paid. Read the full methodology for thresholds, equations, and what the analysis deliberately doesn't capture.
Where the Lap Time Goes
Cadillac vs Midfield — Where the Lap Time Gets Lost
Median speed traces and cumulative time loss across the lap · pick a race · corner zones shaded
Australia: net +4.25 s lost across the lap — the worst of the four races. The cumulative line climbs almost continuously from Turn 1 onward. The mid-lap complex (1500–3500 m) and the chicane sequence at 4200–4700 m are the steepest sections. Albert Park's high-downforce demands have been Cadillac's worst circuit so far.
Curves vs Straights — Four Races, Shifting Story
Lap-time LOST per lap vs Aston / Williams / Haas median · taller bar = bigger source of deficit
Both bars point UP because Cadillac is slower in both phases of the lap, but the relative size shifts race-to-race. Japan is almost a pure corner deficit (red tower, blue near zero). Australia and Miami both show meaningful straight losses on top of corner losses, and Miami flipped the balance — the straight loss (+1.15 s) is now bigger than the corner loss (+0.87 s). The season-average corner-share eased from 60 % through Japan to 51 % after Miami — a clean 50/50 split.
Mid-corner Minimum Speed — Every Corner, Every Race
Δ km/h, Cadillac − midfield median · negative = Cadillac slower at apex
46 of 62 detected corners across the four races sit below the zero line. Miami's deltas (amber) cluster much closer to zero than the other three races — 9 of 14 corners are in deficit at Miami, and the average is just −1.2 km/h. Worst single corner of the season: Australia C14 (the Lakeside Drive sequence) at −21.8 km/h. Suzuka T13 (entry to Spoon) is the worst Japan corner at −17.7 km/h. Miami's worst, T6, is just −9.6 km/h — the shallowest "worst-corner" of the four races by a clear margin.
The 12 Worst Corners — Where the Time Goes
Ranked by mid-corner min-speed deficit · color-coded by race · 62 corners total across 4 races
Albert Park still dominates with 6 of the top 12, even after four races. Suzuka has 3, Shanghai 2, and Miami's worst corner — T6 hairpin sequence at −9.6 km/h — sneaks in at #11. The fact that only one of Miami's 14 detected corners makes the top-12 worst list is itself a telling improvement signal. Open the interactive viewer to see all 62 corners sorted however you like.
What It Means
Corner Pace Is Catching Up
Miami's −1.2 km/h avg mid-corner-min deficit is roughly a quarter of what it was at Australia (−4.6) and China (−4.3). One race isn't a trend — Canada won't tell us much about cornering (it's a power-circuit), but Spain (R6, Catalunya) will be the real test for whether the corner step is here to stay.
The Straight-Line Gap Returned
Through China and Japan, Cadillac was 0.10–0.72 s/lap behind the midfield on straights. At Miami it slipped back to −1.15 s — bigger than China and Japan put together. Likely a setup trade for the corner gains; could also be a one-off circuit effect. Canada is the perfect test — long full-throttle bursts down to the Hairpin will expose any straight-line shortfall directly.
The Worst Corners Are Still Old Ones
Of the 12 deepest mid-corner-min deficits across the season, 11 are still from the first three races. Miami contributed only one to the top 12, and that's at #11. The team's worst-case corner performance hasn't moved much; it's the average-case corner performance that improved at Miami.
Lateral G Envelope Tightening
The peak sustained lateral G we observe in Cadillac data is on average 0.37 g lower than the midfield (was 0.42 g through Japan). Miami's individual gap is one of the smallest of the four at 0.28 g lower. Same direction as the corner-min improvement — physics-anchored proxy for "more downforce on the car than there used to be".
What's Next — Canada
Canada (R5) runs May 24 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Montreal. Stop-and-go power circuit: long full-throttle bursts down the Casino and back-straight runs into the Hairpin, heavy braking zones, only a handful of medium-speed corners. That makes Canada a poor test for whether Miami's corner improvement holds — there aren't enough high-load corners to read it cleanly. But it's the perfect test for the straight-line slip that reappeared at Miami: if Cadillac is genuinely paying drag for the new corner setup, you'll see it directly down Casino into the Hairpin. Watch the top-speed delta to the midfield down the back straight before the Hairpin. A gap inside 3 km/h means Miami's straight loss was likely a one-off circuit effect; a gap of 5+ km/h means the trade is real and will need rebalancing before Spain (R6, Catalunya) — which is the actual cornering test. We'll re-run the pipeline post-Canada and ship the five-race trend.