What's going on at Cadillac and Haas? F1 Q&A

After a four-week summer break, Formula 1 returns with the Dutch Grand Prix this weekend.

Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli has a 50-point lead in the drivers' championship going into the race at Zandvoort.

There are 12 races remaining on the 2026 schedule, though uncertainty remains over whether Qatar and Abu Dhabi will go ahead because of the conflict in the Middle East.

Before the season resumes, our F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.

Is the Cadillac reorganisation too hasty? Surely the team would have been better served by evaluating at the end of the debut season? - Tim

Cadillac chief executive officer Dan Towriss made it clear last week that he had always envisaged there would be a time when Graeme Lowdon would be replaced as team principal. But he said that time had come "sooner than expected".

Lowdon and Towriss have worked together to set up Cadillac over the past four years in quite demanding circumstances.

These included the fact Cadillac did not have an official entry until March 2025, only a year before their first race.

Towriss paid tribute to Lowdon's efforts in building a team from scratch while not knowing until the 11th hour when or even whether they would be racing.

But it's clear the American businessman was not happy with what he saw in the first 11 races of Cadillac's life as a competitive entrant. Hence his decision to sack Lowdon and replace him with the highly experienced Marcin Budkowski.

Lowdon was careful to manage expectations as to what could be expected of Cadillac in their first seasons. But it seems there has been a disconnect between what he believed was possible in a given timeframe and what Towriss expected.

The brutal realities of Cadillac's performance are that - if one leaves aside the catastrophe that was Aston Martin for the first 10 races - Cadillac were on average 1.2 seconds off the next slowest team, Williams, who are themselves having a bit of a nightmare season and lag 0.4secs behind the next slowest team, Haas.

And now Aston Martin have introduced their major upgrade, Cadillac face the prospect of spending the rest of the season well adrift of the rest of the field.

On top of that, there have been serious, and repeating, reliability problems, most notably with overheating brakes. It has become a familiar sight to see a Cadillac stopping with its brakes on fire - and quite often early in a race or session.

Towriss was questioned about "blame culture and people forming silos". And he admitted these were both a problem, describing them as "early stage business issues".

He has concluded Cadillac need what he described as "a model with a very strong technical team principal".

That is the model pursued with such success in the past three years by McLaren with Andrea Stella, and now Red Bull with Laurent Mekies.

Towriss said the decision was less based on the reliability issues and more "about just having a clear vision on what we're building in the future, the rate of progress, and making sure that matches the ambitions of ownership".

What would Aston Martin see as a good result at the next race, where Honda will be bringing a new motor? - John

The success of the Honda upgrade planned for the Dutch Grand Prix is less about specific results, and more about whether Honda can prove it is on the right track.

The team believe the engine had a performance deficit that amounted to about 1.5 seconds in lap time compared to the best in the first part of the season.

Honda have not put any numbers on the performance step expected in Zandvoort - either publicly, or within the team.

But the hope at Aston Martin is the new engine will close that gap by about a third.

So it's about seeing a genuine step forward from the engine - not least as proof Honda has understood its issues and has solutions for them as it works on its 2027 engine.

For no-one is this more important than Fernando Alonso. He is said to be waiting to see how the new Honda performs before deciding whether to stay in F1 with Aston Martin next year.

The first positive sign is all the former engineers who worked successful on the Honda when the company was winning championships with Red Bull are now back on the project.

But Alonso has previous experience from his time at McLaren of Honda both not accurately assessing where the performance level of its own engine was, and in upgrades not delivering what was promised.

Honda's reticence in predicting any specific performance step from its engine suggests it has learnt the first lesson.

Alonso will be looking for evidence that is also the case with the second.

What's happening at Haas? They're slipping down the pecking order and they're the only team not using the budget cap in full. They used to have such charisma but I feel that they're becoming F1's forgotten team. Have the owners lost interest in the project? - Steve

As F1's smallest team, both in terms of personnel and budget, Haas have some natural disadvantages that are hard to overcome.

Haas came into this season on the back of their highest-ever points score in 2025, and were bang on time with their new car at the start of the season.

That contrasted with some other high-profile names, who Haas have continued to outperform this year. Haas are unquestionably overachieving for their size - they are not even spending up to the budget-cap limit.

Haas had consecutive points finishes in the first three races, the high point of which was a fifth place for Oliver Bearman in China.

Essentially, the team started the season with a chassis advantage over some rivals and that allowed them to benefit as others were still finding their feet.

At that point, they were on average the sixth-fastest team in qualifying. Now, they are eighth, having slipped behind Racing Bulls and Audi.

Haas have fallen down the pecking order as other teams have introduced upgrades and begun to get on top of the new rules.

Nevertheless, Haas are still seeing the benefits of that strong start - they lie seventh in the constructors' championship at the mid-point of the season.

Haas did have their own upgrade, introduced in Canada, and featuring a new floor, bodywork and rear suspension. But team principal Ayao Komatsu has said it coincided with the team uncovering what he described as a "fundamental weakness" of the car with regard to a lack of high-speed downforce.

A reluctance by team owner Gene Haas to invest in upgrading the team's facilities has been a frustration over the years, but a new simulator - funded through Haas' new partnership with Toyota - is coming on stream shortly, which should give them a boost.

There are valid questions, however, as to what exactly Haas wants from his team. He doesn't seem interested in investing, but he's also not interested in selling. So they're a bit stuck, really.

How soon could a German Grand Prix return to the calendar and what races are likely to replace to Middle Eastern races in 2027 if the conflict continues? - Tom

Formula 1 president Stefano Domenicali raised the possibility of the German Grand Prix returning to the calendar in a call with F1 media at the start of the summer break.

The race was last held in 2019, before falling off the calendar because race organisers could not make the event work financially.

Domenicali said: "Germany, for the first time, we are reconnecting with the possibility of having contact with the Hockenheim people to see if in the future, mid-term, not short term, they can have a race back."

When and if Germany comes to pass will depend whether organisers can put together a suitable financial package.

Right now, that's not the case, although things may change if Audi become competitive and that makes two German teams competing at the front.

Don't forget Domenicali has also said he does not want to have the schedule extend beyond 24 races, and there is pressure to have other new races, especially in Africa.

As for the start of next year in the context of the ongoing war in the Middle East, current plans are for the season start in the Middle East, as it last did in 2024.

Australia had the opener for the past two seasons because of where the Muslim holy month of Ramadan fell.

Domenicali said: "So far, the calendar that will be presented, let's say in autumn, will be as a sort of a normal plan.

"But of course, in case the situation in the Middle East will be not solved, we have options, [a] different plan. And the trigger for that is at the end of the year. So we have still a lot of time, if I may say, to adjust.

"We have different plans with different options ready in place that will accommodate the fact that we will keep, in any case, the target of 24 countries also for next year."

In the scenario that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cannot open the championship in 2027, the obvious solution would be to do what happened this year - start in Australia before moving on to China and Japan.