Can the slowest car on the grid also be the one with the simplest energy management? It may seem paradoxical, but the lack of aerodynamic downforce on the Cadillac MAC26—which slows it through corners—actually helps the team manage battery usage during its learning phase, allowing them to push more energy onto the straights.
With three races behind them, Cadillac still has a wide margin for growth. The team is progressing step by step, and successfully finishing the first three events, except for Valtteri Bottas‘s retirement in Australia, already represents a solid starting point for a team built from scratch, both in infrastructure and personnel.
Reality, however, is always a factor. From the filming day debut at Silverstone, it was clear that the MAC26 was a basic car, designed by engineers to lay the foundation of the project and then develop gradually throughout the season. This explains why it currently suffers from an evident lack of downforce, making it difficult to compete evenly with other midfield teams.
On this front, the MAC26 shows a clear gap compared to rivals: in Q1, the deficit to the top teams ranges between two and three seconds, and can reach around four seconds when the front teams truly push in the final session. Compared to the rest of the midfield, there’s still at least a one-second gap—a gap the team aims to reduce over the course of the year.
There are many areas where Cadillac can improve, and one of the main ones is adding pure aerodynamic downforce. Yet, energy management is also a field that is still being built from scratch: the team has never worked with hybrid engines under the previous regulations and is essentially learning from zero. Without a technical baseline, the workload is significantly larger.
Interestingly, however, there’s a curious benefit. Paradoxically, the MAC26’s low downforce is helping the team manage energy. Since the car cannot attack certain sections at full speed, or must take them more slowly, battery consumption is reduced, leaving more energy to deploy on the straights. And it is on the straights, as Mercedes has shown, that significant lap-time gains can be made.
This also extends to another aspect. Especially on tracks with few charging opportunities, as seen in Australia, where only 7 MJ of energy recovery per lap were available in qualifying, the MAC26—using the same Power Unit—is forced to perform less lift-and-coast. This allows the driver to brake at the car’s ideal point, without having to anticipate braking for energy management reasons.
Of course, less aerodynamic downforce also means braking stability is reduced compared to the top teams, so the braking point tends to be earlier. “For us in qualifying, there was no energy management. No lift-and-coast, because, for example, compared to Ferrari, we spend less time at full throttle due to having less grip,” explained Valtteri Bottas.
“So, on a single lap, so far, no special management has been necessary,” Bottas said during the Japanese GP weekend, noting that Cadillac has faced fewer energy issues—which, however, will arise one day as downforce on the AMR26 increases.
“Exactly, they may come. I know F1 and the FIA are working on some improvements for deployment or recovery if there’s anything we can assist with. But for us, overall, things have gone well so far,” added the Finnish driver, referring to meetings planned in April, including this week, where decisions on 2026 regulations will be made.
From this perspective, there are two effects. With less downforce, cornering speeds are lower, and throttle application is often delayed compared to the top teams, altering how energy is managed across the lap. Additionally, less downforce usually also reduces drag on the straights, further influencing energy balance.
Knowing they don’t have enough downforce to tackle certain sections at the same speed as rivals, hybrid energy strategies also change: it becomes crucial to decide where to deploy energy most effectively to turn it into a concrete lap-time advantage.
All of this, when compared to Ferrari as mentioned by Bottas—the supplier of the Power Unit—translates into less aggressive super-clipping. Looking at qualifying in Australia, the SF-26 cut deployment more aggressively before turn nine, showing a pronounced derating and super-clipping phase compared to Cadillac.
This meant that the MAC26 reached over 15 km/h more than the Ferrari at that point, only to have to brake earlier due to insufficient downforce to tackle turns nine and ten at the same level as the Rossa, which benefits from an excellent chassis. The result was that Sergio Perez could recover over a tenth on the straight just in the derating and super-clipping phase.
It’s an intriguing detail: even though the Cadillac exited turn seven much slower, it still needed to expend significant energy to reach a top speed similar to the Ferrari, suggesting that, potentially, the MAC26 could reach even higher maximum speeds.
After Japanese GP qualifying, Carlos Sainz summed up the new regulations perfectly: “The more you push [in the corner], the slower you’ll be.” Clearly, Cadillac is an extreme example, but it highlights a unique aspect of the 2026 regulations, showing that many parameters still influence energy management.
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