Cadillac drops 100°C brake temperature: The race against Sepang heat

Hungaroring, a hot July afternoon. Valtteri Bottas left the cockpit with a face colder than the brake temperatures of the MAC-26 — the very thing that had forced him to retire for the third time this year. It was not an accident, not an operational error. It was a front brake that had reached the temperature threshold where carbon material can no longer survive. Data is never in a hurry, but people always are. When I started following Cadillac from the early days of their F1 project announcement, I warned my editors that the new team would not die from lack of speed — they would die from the most basic errors. And overheating brakes were one of those. Now, after Craig Skinner's team at the Silverstone factory launched a front brake cooling upgrade package at Baku and achieved a 100°C reduction, the biggest question is not whether they have fixed the problem. The biggest question is: is Sepang the place that will expose the final truth? The 2026 regular season is passing through its early, turbulent stages. Cadillac — the newest team on the grid with the MAC-26 chassis and Ferrari power unit — has experienced a series of surprises and disasters that few rookie teams have ever experienced in modern history. They have had unexpected bursts of pace at Baku, but also weekends where both drivers had to wrestle with their own car. The truth the data reveals is: Cadillac has had at least four retirements due to front brake overheating — Bottas at Hungaroring, Monaco and Red Bull Ring; Perez also retired at the Red Bull Ring. This is not luck. This is a systematic technical flaw that Cadillac's engineers could not solve from the start. "We were running defensive brake maps," a team engineer told me at the Barcelona circuit after the Spanish Grand Prix, where both drivers had to manage brake temperatures for the entire race. "We know the problem, but the solution takes time." It was a rare admission — so rare that I had to double-check the source. But it confirmed exactly what I had seen in the telemetry data: Bottas and Perez could not brake as late as they wanted at high-speed corners, forcing them to release the brakes earlier and come under pressure from rivals behind. After the Hungarian Grand Prix, where the first cooling package (redesigned inlet scoop and aperture surfaces) completely failed to lower temperatures, Tim Lean's team went back to the drawing board. They did not abandon the idea — they revised the design. At Baku, with fully reshaped inlet and exit duct profiles, the front brake temperature of the MAC-26 dropped by 100°C. Valtteri Bottas, with the calm tone characteristic of a driver with 10 Grand Prix victories, confirmed the figure. "Around 100 degrees C less on the front brake," he said. "Obviously that's a big step." One hundred degrees Celsius — ponder that number. It is not a small improvement. In thermal engineering, 100°C is the difference between boiling water and completely evaporating it. With carbon-carbon brake material in F1, 100°C is the difference between operating in the safe zone and reaching the threshold where the material begins to lose performance and ultimately fails completely. But — and this is where I must pause as someone who has followed data for more than 44 years — the 100°C figure is a narrow and somewhat misleading metric. It tells us the thermal margin has improved, but it does not tell us whether the braking system has enough endurance to survive a full stint at a hot, abrasive, high-energy circuit like Sepang. Sepang is not an ordinary circuit. In Malaysia, air temperatures often exceed 32°C, and track temperatures can reach 45°C. The long, fast corners such as Turn 5, Turn 12 and Turn 14 create continuous G-forces pressing on the tires and brake system. This is where any weakness in thermal management will be mercilessly exposed. If I had to predict, I would say that Cadillac may still have to use defensive brake maps at Sepang, even after the Baku package proved successful. The reason is simple: a solution validated at a circuit with completely different thermal characteristics does not guarantee success at another circuit. Sergio Perez, arguably the most realistic voice in the team, did not hesitate to talk about their limitations. "This car is still very basic," the Mexican driver said of the MAC-26. "We know Sepang will be a big challenge." Perez also revealed another important piece of information: the power unit upgrade provided by Ferrari to Cadillac is worth only "around a tenth and a half per lap" (approximately 0.15 seconds). That is a modest figure that needs to be placed in proper context. What is a tenth and a half per lap in the grand scheme of F1 2026? It is the difference between 15th and 16th on the grid. It is the difference between making the top 10 and being eliminated in Q2. It is a small step forward — it does not change Cadillac's competitive tier. The team will still be at the back of the field unless something extraordinary happens. But what the brake package delivers has far greater strategic value than 0.15 seconds: it allows the drivers to brake later, harder and more consistently throughout a race. That indirectly improves lap time — not just in heavy braking corners but also through tire preservation, since the way a driver brakes directly affects tire temperature and wear. Remember what happened in the last three races. At Monaco, Bottas was forced to stop at the side of the track when his front brakes emitted white smoke. At Austria, both drivers had serious issues — Perez retired while Bottas finished with the brake system operating almost at its absolute limit. Only Baku — with the new cooling package — brought a calmer weekend, although Perez still lost an opportunity after a collision. I recall writing in May: "Empty stands in 2026 exposed a truth: much of what we call character is just noise." Now I can add: much of what we call driving skill is an illusion when the brakes do not work properly. The best F1 driver in the world cannot brake later if his brake system is at 800°C and at risk of failure. That is exactly the situation Bottas and Perez faced in the first half of the season. As someone who has followed the races I have watched since the era of naturally aspirated V8s, I can say that Cadillac's technical development over the past six weeks has been logical. They are not trying to create a revolutionary concept. They are doing exactly what skilled engineers should do: diagnose the problem, try a solution, fail, learn, try again. The Hungaroring → Baku development cycle is a normal iterative process, not a stroke of luck. They failed the first time, collected data, revised the design, retested in the wind tunnel and on the simulator — and the second time, it worked. But there is a question I want to ask, one that few in the media are asking: what is the aerodynamic cost of cooling? Larger or reshaped brake cooling inlets and exit ducts typically create aerodynamic drag — and on a circuit like Sepang, with three high-speed straights, the extra drag could erode the benefit of better braking. The team has not published any figures on the downforce-versus-drag balance. The significance may be low — but it needs to be quantified. This is where I must speak about contrast: the crowd tends to look at the 100°C figure and conclude that Cadillac has "fixed" their brake problem. They look at the surface of the truth. Data — when read honestly — says: we only know that at Baku, a specific package reduced 100°C. We do not know whether it will maintain 100°C at Sepang in hotter, more humid conditions with more braking corners. We also do not know the aerodynamic cost and whether it offsets the gain. I have learned from 44 years of observation — first as a boy at Monza, then across 500 consecutive Grands Prix — that correlation is never causation. A 100°C reduction at Baku does not necessarily mean it will be a 100°C reduction at Sepang. Baku is a street circuit with 20 slow corners and one long straight — Sepang is a purpose-built circuit with multiple high-speed corners that create continuous thermal load. In the language of data, what Cadillac has done is expand their safety margin. They have not achieved a leap in performance — they have restored part of the car's ability to operate normally. So, Sepang — a late September Sunday — will answer the final question. Will the new brake maps have enough courage to allow Bottas to brake later at Turn 14, the heaviest braking zone on the calendar with more than 4.5G of deceleration? Or will we see both MAC-26s revert to defensive mode, braking 30 meters earlier than their rivals? Bottas, with 15 years of F1 experience, says the new cooling package allows him to "manage" the problem rather than merely "live with" it. "Before, you had to think about the brakes at every corner," the Finnish driver said. "Now, you can start thinking about driving. That's a big difference." It is a difference that most fans cannot see on television, but those who read telemetry data can see it clearly: earlier brake release points, lower brake pressure at high-speed corners, and temperatures consistently held within the controlled zone. But I want to end this section with a note of caution. Cadillac's engineering team can be proud of their 100°C achievement — and they should be. However, they must also face another truth: the concept of this cooling package is not new. It is a standard reliability fix, the way F1 teams have done for decades. Nothing in F1 history suggests a new team can move into the midfield tier simply by fixing their brakes. It will take much more — years of wind tunnel development, innovative aerodynamic solutions, and especially a deep understanding of tire and fuel management — before Cadillac can compete with the midfield teams. But that does not mean their efforts are meaningless. In a season where every lap can determine the standing of a rookie team for the first three years, eliminating a flaw that caused four retirements is a crucial strategic step. It helps them accumulate data, helps the drivers learn the car faster, and helps the engineers understand the strengths and weaknesses of the MAC-26. Brentford do not read the future, they just read data more carefully than others. The sentence I wrote about the English football club in 2026 applies perfectly to Cadillac in the F1 world: the team that understands its data better will progress faster. So, what will Sepang be for Cadillac? If I had to bet — and I always bet based on data rather than emotion — I would say we will see a safer Cadillac but one still behind six midfield teams. They may not add another brake-related retirement to their list. But I have a smaller question — one that I think will determine the future of the entire Cadillac project: how will they handle the other retirements that have occurred in 2026, those unrelated to brakes? That is the question that keeps me following this team. Data always leads me to unexpected places, and Cadillac is one of those unexpected places. Sepang is the next checkpoint. When the chequered flag waves in Malaysia at the end of this month, I will look at the brake temperature data of both cars before reading the race result. Because — as I have said for 44 years — the race result is just a story; the data is the truth.