Cadillac team boss Marcin Budkowski has conceded that his team is still paying the price for the brake problems that plagued it earlier in the season.

The all-new Cadillac squad has been unable to lift itself from the back of the grid as it continues to mature in its inaugural campaign.

Cadillac brake problems carrying a lengthy price

The American manufacturer has endured a difficult rookie F1 season. Although earning plaudits for being closer to the pack than many had feared, the team has been unable to show the progress of fellow strugglers Aston Martin.

However, where Cadillac has improved, is in reliability. But a focus in this area is a major reason for the lack of performance gains, says team principal Budkowski.

“As a new team we have a lot where we need to progress, pretty much every area,” he told Sky Sports.

“When you look at the operations in the garage, when you look at some small things like managing the parts, having enough spares, you know the quality of the parts and so on.

“So everything is new, everything needs to be improved but there are a few areas that when I arrived were quite clear to me that we needed to make a massive step on. And it’s always the same.

“You have a limited amount of people, you have a limited amount of budget, so a limited amount of resources, you need to use them on the areas that matters the most, the biggest levers if you want for performance, for reliability, and that’s the first thing I’ve done after a few weeks is redirect and reprioritise a little bit how we use the people, how we use the money.

“This year, you mentioned reliability that took a lot of time to solve, very complex issues on the brakes.

“That took a lot of resources in terms of human resource, in terms of money or away from the development.

“And development is like interest and compounds, the performance you don’t find today, you’re not going to find it in the future, it’s just performance lost because you lost that time.

“All of these things that are things we’re fighting against.

“But at the end of the day, it’s a game of priorities, it’s putting the efforts where it matters the most.”

Budkowski joined Cadillac ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix in a shock move as Graeme Lowdon, who was key to securing the team’s place on the grid, was axed.

“However you look at it, there’s never an ideal time to start because, yes, there’s the racing season but also like the process of building the new car,” Budkowski said of the timing of his appointment.

“The reality is it’s a continuous improvement process, we’re learning, we’re in this season where you know every lap, every race, every session is additional learning that we’re having, it’s a team of people that gets together as well; I think we have the highest proportion of people without F1 experience in the pit lane.

“We have people from all teams that have experience but have never designed a car together.

“We don’t have any data to rely on, no experience, no car to iterate on, it all needs to come together.

“There’s a number of shortcuts that have been done to get some cars on the grid this year that we need to correct for next year, that’s going to give us performance and then there’s you know the development and all the ideas we want to bring but it’s a relative game.

“We’re facing 10 other teams that are very competitive, we have a big step to make for next year, we will make a big step, will that be enough compared to the others to actually go and fight for points and more, we’ll see next year. Certainly, that’s the ambition but as you know, it’s not an easy game.”