"I suppose the most important piece of information here is that we have been meaning to go to the Formula 1 Arcade in Philly from the day it opened, and after some punting and faffing about, we finally managed to do so approximately one year later."
Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much. You made me achieve one of my dreams, Antonelli said over the radio after taking the chequered flag. I'm speechless. I'm about to cry to be honest, he said in his first interview as a winner in front of the Shanghai circuit crowd before doing just that.
In the short term, expectations are brutally realistic, but this is still a team intent on making noise from day one. That intent will be made clear when Cadillac unveils the livery of its first F1 car during a Super Bowl commercial Sunday. Such a move is a statement and arrival aimed as much at mainstream America as at a paddock that, for years, questioned whether the brand belonged on the grid at all.
Drivers had eviscerated the new formula after stepping out of their cars following qualifying on Saturday; three world champions in Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris all spoke out about the cars in various ways. Norris had said F1 had traded the best and most enjoyable cars to drive for the worst, and certainly there was a remarkably negative mood over the paddock after qualifying.
The newly unveiled car is ultra-agile thanks to the weight reduction achieved by shaving off components like the skid-control, torque-vectoring, or automatic brake-assist. It doesn't even have power steering, and gives buyers the option to skip the air conditioning unit for weight reduction, making it the ideal fit for raw purists who want to feel every little change happening in the driving dynamics.
