The American team continues to accumulate rookie mistakes. The Finn received a Drive Through for exceeding the pit lane speed limit: "I pressed the limiter button, but it didn't make enough contact," he explained.
Cadillac continues to pay the rookie tax, The American team, in its debut season in Formula 1, added a new setback at the Miami Grand Prix: Valtteri Bottas was penalized with a Drive Through for exceeding the pit lane speed limit by nearly 10 kilometers per hour, The reason, according to the driver himself, was a steering wheel failure.
"I pressed the pit lane speed limiter button, but apparently not hard enough. We're still lacking a bit of response on some buttons, so it's another mistake we're working on," Bottas declared at the end of the race. The Finn acknowledged that the problem is known within the team: "It's a known problem, we just don't have the new buttons yet, we hope they'll be ready for the next Grand Prix," he added.
It is not the first time Cadillac has suffered with the steering wheel, In Australia, in the first race of the season, Bottas had already retired due to a similar problem with the same component. "It's one of those things that can happen when you start as a new team," said the driver at the time, who signed in Miami his worst weekend of the year as he was the slowest on the grid and the only one lapped twice.
The steering wheel error has a simple solution, most teams cover the buttons with a small frame that prevents the finger from pressing an unwanted key or not pressing it hard enough, Mercedes for example, implemented this solution after the 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, when Lewis Hamilton went wide on a restart by touching a button he shouldn't have. Cadillac hopes to debut its new buttons in Canada.
Meanwhile, the American team remains immersed in an accelerated learning process, for Miami, Cadillac was the second team that introduced the most new features to its cars, only surpassed by Ferrari, nine modifications that, according to Bottas, have not worked as expected: "Many of them lack quality, which makes what was brought not work and it's as if they had done nothing," he admitted.
The problem of inconsistent upgrades is not new in Formula 1, in 2024, Ferrari brought a large upgrade package to Barcelona that turned out to be a fiasco. The Italian team lost three months of work and, as a consequence, the Constructors' World Championship slipped through their hands against McLaren. Cadillac, which buys several parts from Ferrari but seeks independence with external suppliers, hopes not to suffer the same fate.
Bottas, for his part, trusts that the solution will arrive soon, the next Grand Prix, in Canada, should see the new buttons debut and with that, new rookie mistakes would be avoided. At the lower end of the grid, where Cadillac fights alongside Aston Martin, every detail counts and a badly pressed button can be very costly.