Cadillac's F1 team takes shape: Inside the race to launch America's 2026 contender

New York Times

14-05-2025

'Everything starts here tonight.'
Dan Towriss, CEO of TWG Motorsports, had long dreamed of this moment: standing on a stage in the middle of a high-end Miami restaurant, converted for the night into the 'Cadillac Club' to celebrate the team's entry into Formula One in 2026.
Towriss, wearing an all-white suit, had been welcomed onto the stage by actor Terry Crews, who'd hyped up the crowd gathering on the floor below. Before Crews, Grammy-nominated singer and actress Janelle Monae had performed a set that included a surprise appearance on a balcony to one side of the room, drawing attention away from the queues forming at the open bars.
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Twelve months earlier, such a night seemed a distant hope at best. In January 2024 (back when the proposed 11th F1 team entrant was still Andretti instead of Cadillac), F1 had rejected an expansion of the grid beyond 10 teams, none of whom seemed at all interested in pulling another chair up at their exclusive table.
Now, not only had Cadillac been accepted warmly to the grid thanks its General Motors backing, but personnel from many of the existing teams were spending their Saturday nights enjoying Cadillac's hospitality, hanging on Towriss' every word.
'The environment has changed,' Towriss had told reporters earlier in the day in Miami. 'It's very welcoming and we certainly appreciate that. The past is the past and we're now welcome onto the grid. We appreciate that and we're getting about our work.'
As impressive as Cadillac's glitzy, no-expense-spared Miami launch may have been, its first F1 race is now less than a year away — and working to make the start is its primary focus.
There is no time to waste.
During a media round table that included The Athletic during the Miami GP weekend, Towriss claimed the close partnership and integration between Cadillac and General Motors is what sets his team's entry apart on the grid. General Motors has an extensive motorsports history with different brands such as Chevrolet, which has won NASCAR's manufacturers' championship more than 40 times. The next closest is Ford at 17.
Team principal Graeme Lowdon told The Athletic that Cadillac has a clear schedule for creating its car and the most recent milestone it met was the delivery of its first 2026 chassis. A roll hoop was attached to it, and while this won't be built into the actual car, this will be used for all testing purposes.
'The homologation tests are very intensive,' Lowdon explained, referring to the stringent FIA requirements that each new chassis must pass before being approved for competition. 'And that's giving us a chance already to make sure that when we start making the production chassis, we'll be comfortable that we'll pass all the tests, because we don't have a '25 chassis manufactured to test.'
Up until this point, the team has been creating quarter chassis (essentially partial models) as 'they're quicker to make,' Lowdon said. But Cadillac couldn't simulate certain tests with the quarter chassis. A full chassis will allow it to take the next step forward in testing and development. Engines take time to develop, particularly ahead of seasons when regulations change, as they do in 2026. As GM president Mark Reuss said in a media roundtable during the Miami GP, the team is having to look at 'energy and power and how to store it, how to make it, and how to carry it — and do it really efficiently.'
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GM Performance Power Units LLC, which was founded by General Motors and TWG Motorsports, received approval from the FIA last month to become an F1 power unit (PU) supplier beginning in 2029. Cadillac will therefore be using Ferrari power units as a customer squad for its first three F1 seasons. Lowdon said the relationship's required for the PU and transmission development 'is going really well.'
'We've already been doing a lot of impact testing of front (wing) noses and things for quite some time now, so all the bits are starting to kind of come together,' Lowdon said. 'It's cool to see when parts are arriving… The actual race cars are still some way off being made, but everything's moving along in the right way.'
This F1 team began building before it received the official green light for entry onto the grid from the FIA and F1, during its Andretti infancy. It started up its satellite base at Silverstone in the UK in early 2024 and its headcount was over 120 people by May 2024.
Cadillac now has just under 400 full-time employees, according to Lowdon, and is still growing. 'We get, on average, just over one a day now, joining the team,' he said, adding that some personnel are coming from other teams while some are from outside the world of F1. There are some areas where Cadillac hasn't hired yet, including the garage staff, such as mechanics to service the race cars at F1 events. Lowdon said, 'We're recruiting them now and they'll join in three months or six months,' depending on when certain departments are needed.
The expectation is that the number of people employed will be around 600 when the 2026 season begins, according to Lowdon. The biggest F1 teams — including Mercedes and Red Bull — have approximately 1,200 staff. Haas, as the smallest team on the grid, has 330. But building the workforce for this project doesn't stop, though there is the cost cap, which limits how much can be spent on certain operations, to consider. More factories are coming online stateside, starting next year with Cadillac's Fishers, Indiana, F1 headquarters.
'The next growth element is on the manufacturing side and that will be primarily Fishers,' Lowdon said. 'And we have to wait until the building's built. Then we have to put machinery in there and then we have to train people.'
As of March 2025, the exterior of the Fishers building was complete, and the expectation is for the facility to be online in Q1 next year, according to Lowdon. He added, 'I think it'll become a destination for U.S. Formula One fans as well — a place where you can go and see Formula One cars getting made. Nowhere else in the U.S. you can do that.'
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Cadillac's other U.S. facility being built is in NASCAR country: Concord, North Carolina. This facility will be dedicated to producing power units and the Concord city council approved $750,000 in incentives during a February meeting for the multi-million dollar facility. According to the city council's agenda from that meeting, the expectation is that it'll bring in 300 to 350 jobs, including in research and development, engineering and manufacturing.
The facility will not only be built near General Motors' existing technology center in Concord, but it's also close to Hendrick Motorsports, a GM powerhouse in NASCAR.
And then there's Silverstone, the European base primarily being used for car design aerodynamics — 'Because it's just impossible to hire 200 people overnight in the U.S. who already have Formula One aero experience,' Lowdon said. The manufacturing capabilities at Silverstone will be primarily used for producing wind tunnel models, considering Cadillac is using one in Cologne, Germany, to actually test its designs.
But Cadillac does 'want to go and race a car that's built in America and with an engine that's built in America as well,' Lowdon said during a March media call. It'll take time to get to that point, but make no mistake — this is an American team racing under an American license in 2026. The Cadillac F1 team just happens to be surrounded by 'strong motorsport DNA' from elsewhere in the world.
'We have this iconic American brand. We'll have over 600,000 square feet of manufacturing or facilities in the United States, split between Indianapolis and Charlotte,' Towriss said. 'But there's also a great respect for the history and legacy of Formula One with the operation in Silverstone.
'When we look at those locations, while we didn't plan it this way, we're in the birthplace of Formula One, the birthplace of NASCAR and the birthplace of IndyCar.'
The last 'new' team to join the F1 grid was Haas in 2016, and it made a strong debut with a driver lineup of Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutiérrez. The team finished eighth with 29 points, though Toro Rosso (now known as Racing Bulls) was miles ahead in seventh with 63 points. So, how should success be defined for Cadillac in 2026? Towriss said it's multifaceted.
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'It starts with seeing success on track. We want to build our fandom for Cadillac Formula One Team. We want commercial success,' Towriss said in Miami. 'It's really all of the above and we're here to not just to look like everybody else. We want to move Formula One forward. We want to be fresh, bold, new. Finding ways to do that and really accomplish that in Formula One. And I think when we look at all those things together, that's what's going to define success for this team.'
The commercial aspect is another intriguing component Cadillac is sorting. Lowdon said he 'underestimated the appeal' his squad is already encountering on this front. There is already another U.S. team on the grid in Haas, which is owned by American Gene Haas and headquartered in Kannapolis, N.C. But a significant amount of its operations are in Europe — its cars are designed in Italy and it has a permanent team base in the UK. With Cadillac, Lowdon feels 'the approach here is different and, from what I've seen so far, it appears to be very attractive, in particular, to U.S. sponsors. It's a team they can really get behind and understand and identify with.'
Lowdon couldn't say whether or not Cadillac has already signed sponsors, and given how many brands prefer to be involved with full team launches, it may be some time before announcements are made. While he's not sure what the timing of such revelations would be, Lowdon claims he's encouraged by the number and quality of brands interested in Cadillac. It's not only well-known organizations, he said, but also 'a lot that are new to Formula One, so that suggests that we're offering something new.'
While many people are wondering whether one of the team's first drivers will be American, it's natural to ask whether Cadillac is keen for its main partners to be American companies. Towriss said they do 'want to have key American brands as anchors;' however, Formula One is a global motorsports series. He added, 'This isn't an America-only strategy.'
'There's a whole bunch of really creative things that are going into this, from the special nature of Cadillac, the special nature of what we're doing as Americans coming into Formula One. We totally respect what that means. It's not going to be easy,' Reuss said. 'We know it's something that obviously hasn't really been done. We're up for it, though, but we're treating it with that level of detail, sophistication. We've got one shot to get into this, and it's a long-term plan, so don't take it lightly.'