Cadillac’s arrival to the Formula 1 grid is rapidly approaching. literally.
In a recent interview, team principal Graeme Lowdon told The Associated Press, “We have countdown clocks on the wall of every office that we have.” There are just two things left to do.
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One is the car’s initial engine start-up, followed by free practice during Cadillac’s first official Formula One session in Melbourne, Australia, in March of the following year.
It will mark the beginning of a new mission for General Motors and the conclusion of a lengthy process that involved years of discussions, a name and leadership change, and even an inquiry by the US Justice Department before the company joined Formula One.
Ted Lasso in Formula One
Lowdon feels like an inversion of the fictional U.S. soccer coach in London, Ted Lasso, as a British racing boss building an American team.
Lowdon, who was hired in part because of his expertise navigating the sport’s convoluted approval process for new teams, claims he has put a lot of effort into assimilating to American racing culture for a team that would manufacture its cars in Fishers, Indiana.
Cadillac has a plan to run an American team, according to Lowdon, but there is also a design and manufacturing facility close to the Silverstone British Grand Prix track. The goal is to gather as many diverse viewpoints as you can when developing a race car.
According to Lowdon, Formula 1 is an extremely innovative industry. “With diversity of thought comes innovation and hopefully lap time.”
NASA’s Teachings
It has rarely been successful in the past to run an F1 team outside of the sport’s home countries of Italy and England. Cadillac is learning from the space race of the 1960s.
Instead of reading a list of racing disasters, Lowdon sought out non-F1 initiatives that were highly technical, had several sites, immovable deadlines, and intense public scrutiny, he added. The Apollo flights were the finest example I could locate.
I spent a great deal of time researching NASA’s management structure. They accomplished some really smart things, in my opinion, that we could incorporate into a brand-new Formula 1 team design and management strategy. Maximizing peer-to-peer communication among engineers was the main goal.
Haas, the other American team in Formula One, is more dependent on Europe. Although the crew is mostly located in Britain and the cars are designed in Italy, the company’s headquarters are in North Carolina.
The short-listed drivers
The fact that Cadillac hasn’t revealed who its race drivers will be shouldn’t be interpreted as a setback, according to Lowdon, even though current teams strongly include their drivers in the creation of the 2026 vehicles.
Halfway through the 2025 season, Cadillac has three or four names on its shortlist, and according to Lowdon, Cadillac has more negotiating power than normal.
“We’re not under the same time pressure because we’re not in sync with the other teams,” Lowdon stated. No driver is sitting there saying, “Oh, if you don’t sign them, Aston Martin will sign me next week.”
Drivers like Zhou Guanyu, Valtteri Bottas, and Sergio Perez who lost their race spots for 2025 may be able to return to Formula One with the new outfit. Several Americans and former Formula One drivers, like Mick Schumacher, have also been the subject of conjecture.
In a social media video that went viral, Bottas, a ten-time Mercedes race winner, made fun of the competition to sign with Cadillac by praising the luxurious seat in a Cadillac SUV.
He’s someone I’ve known for a while. He has a large fan base, and I enjoy and am aware of his sense of humor, Lowdon added. Almost immediately after (Cadillac’s F1 entrance) was confirmed, my phone became really active. Everyone wants to drive a Cadillac, and I suppose Valtteri has only made that even more obvious.
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http://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing is the AP auto racing website.
