A brand-new team starts a long way back. Ten rounds in, the real question is simple: is Cadillac actually closing the gap to the front — or just visiting shorter circuits? Each chart now answers it two ways: the raw deficit in seconds (left axis, solid) and the same gap as a percentage of the benchmark lap (right axis, dashed), which strips track length out of the trend.
Every session, someone sets the benchmark — pole in qualifying, the fastest lap in the race. These charts track how far the best Cadillac was off that benchmark, round by round. Lower is better. A raw gap in seconds is easy to read but flatters short tracks — 2.7s off a 66-second Red Bull Ring lap is a bigger relative deficit than 2.7s off a 92-second Shanghai lap — so each chart also plots the gap as a percentage of the benchmark (the dashed line, right axis). Where the solid and dashed lines disagree, that's track length talking.
Both deficits on one chart, Grand Prix by Grand Prix. Solid lines are seconds (left axis); dashed lines are the same gap as a % of the benchmark lap (right axis). In seconds, both fell from about four toward the high-2s by mid-season — a clear "closing" shape. But the dashed % lines are much flatter: normalize for track length and the deficit has mostly held a steady band. That gap between the two shapes is the whole question.
Pole (the fastest qualifying lap of the weekend) minus the quicker of the two Cadillacs, for each Grand Prix. This is main Grand Prix qualifying only; sprint-shootout times are tracked separately on the Results page.
In seconds, the one-lap deficit fell from about 4.1s in Australia to a low of 2.70s at Monaco, then drifted back up to 3.12s at Silverstone and 3.46s at Belgium. Read the dashed % line, though, and the picture changes: Australia (5.2%) was the real outlier, and since China the relative gap has hovered in a tight 3.3–4.3% band. Belgium is the telling one — 3.46s sounds middling, but on Spa's enormous 1:44 lap it's just 3.32%, Cadillac's best relative qualifying lap of the season — while short-lap Austria, a modest 2.83s, is a season-worst 4.3%. The seconds say "improving then slipping"; the percentage says "holding steady, with a Spa-sized dip."
The field's fastest race lap minus Cadillac's fastest, for every Grand Prix and sprint. Where both Cadillacs retired early (Austria), comparing Cadillac's heavy-fuel opening laps to the field's late low-fuel best would be meaningless — so for that race the field's fastest is capped to the laps Cadillac actually completed.
Race pace scatters more, but the two lenses split the same way. In seconds the low is the Canada sprint at 2.26s; normalized, though, the season-best is now Belgium's Grand Prix at 2.87% — 3.12s that barely registers against Spa's long lap, edging the Canada sprint's 3.0%. The costly rounds only show up in the % line: Monaco's 3.41s looks mid-pack in seconds but is the worst GP of the year at 4.6% once its slow 73-second lap is accounted for. Silverstone's race stays elevated on both lenses (3.74s / 4.1%), so that was a genuinely tough weekend, not a track artifact — matching the downforce read that its fast corners hurt the car. The Austria point (red) is the fair-window figure; without the cap it would read a misleading 4.07s, because Cadillac's best came on lap 3 with a full fuel load while the leaders set their times near the flag. Belgium isn't capped — Pérez retired on lap 13 with a rear-suspension failure, but Bottas ran the full distance, so his lap sets a fair mark.
So — is Cadillac closing the gap? In raw seconds, yes: from roughly four seconds down to the high-2s. But most of that came off a single ragged opener in Australia and a mid-season run of shorter circuits; measured as a share of the lap, the deficit has held around 3.3–4.5% since China with no clear downward slope. The honest read is a big early step, then a plateau — a team that has stopped losing ground but hasn't yet started reeling the front in. Belgium is the first genuinely encouraging wobble in that plateau: season-best percentages on both lenses (3.32% qualifying, 2.87% race). But it's one weekend, on the longest lap of the year, from cars that still qualified 19th and 20th — so it's a hint, not a turn. Hungary is the test: it's a short, twisty lap that has flattered no one all year, so if the percentages stay low there too, that's the dashed line finally starting to fall — and the gap genuinely closing. For the complementary view — the same deficit measured as cornering grip, corner by corner — see the downforce analysis, where Spa's fast corners tell a very different story from its lap time.