Sergio Perez Calls Pointless Baku Weekend ‘One of My Best’ as Cadillac’s Struggles Continue

• Sergio Perez says his Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend was “one of my best” in Formula 1, even though he finished outside the points for Cadillac.
• Perez recovered from a grid penalty and P20 in qualifying to finish 14th, matching his best result of the season with the new team.
• Cadillac remain without a point in their debut season, with Valtteri Bottas’ P13 in China still the team’s best finish.

A Result That Did Not Match the Performance

Sergio Perez has rated his Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend as one of the best of his career, even though the result on the timing sheet suggested otherwise. The Cadillac driver failed to reach the points in Baku, yet came away from the streets that made him a two-time Grand Prix winner in 2021 and 2023 with a feeling of real progress.

Perez arrived in Baku hopeful of another strong showing on a circuit that has suited him throughout his career. His weekend did not go entirely to plan. He put in his best practice sessions of the season, but a difficult qualifying left him down in P20, compounded by a three-place grid penalty for impeding another driver. From there, though, Perez turned the race into his joint best result at Cadillac.

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Fighting Back Through the Field

Even starting from P20, Perez ran with the midfield for large parts of the race and crossed the line in 14th, level with his previous best finish for the team. He described the weekend as one of the strongest performances of his time in Formula 1, even accounting for the missing points.

“I think it’s been one of my best weekends, best performance in Baku and I’ve had some good ones here,” Perez said. “I’m pretty pleased with that, I think I drove at a high level the whole weekend, especially in the race but we are simply a second, two seconds off the pace to compete with the others.”

He pointed to a specific passage of the race where Cadillac’s car briefly matched the pace of cars ahead of it in the constructors’ standings.

“We stayed the whole first stint with the Williams, with the Audi, helped by the overtake mode. But at the end, we just didn’t have the straight-line speed, we are too draggy on the straights.”

Perez was direct about what still needs to change before Cadillac can turn performances like this into actual points.

“Plenty of things we need to improve, but as we know, it’s going to be a difficult end of the year.”

A Season Still Searching for a First Point

Cadillac remain the only team on the 2026 grid without a points finish. Valtteri Bottas’ P13 in China stands as the closest the team has come, and with no major upgrades expected before the season ends, Perez does not expect the raw pace deficit to close before 2027.

“I think we don’t have anything coming to the car unfortunately but I think operationally and pushing the team to improve and get the maximum out of the weekends, I think we are heading in that direction,” he said.

“We just have to keep pushing a lot harder as a team and things will come.”

Two-Time Baku Winner, Building Something New

The contrast between Perez’s history in Baku and his current reality with Cadillac is stark. His wins there in 2021 and 2023 came while fighting for podiums and victories with Red Bull. This year, the target was simply staying in touch with the midfield, and even that required his best practice form of the season plus a recovery drive from P20 on the grid.

That gap between past results and present targets appears to sit fine with Perez himself. His comments after Baku focused not on the missing points but on the level he felt he drove at across the full weekend, treating the race itself as evidence that Cadillac’s on-track performance is closer to the midfield than the results column currently shows.

With the season heading toward its final rounds, Perez’s message to his own team was less about this single result and more about carrying that weekend’s level of performance into the remaining races, in the hope that a maiden Cadillac points finish arrives before the year is out.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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