F1’s newbies Cadillac want to hit the ground running in 2026

SINGAPORE – On the Marina Bay Street Circuit on Oct 5, all eyes were on the 10 teams who spent all weekend focusing on delivering their best performance at the Singapore Grand Prix as the Formula One season moves towards the tail end.

Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away, and away from the spotlight, the grid’s 11th team Cadillac, are hard at work at their Silverstone base.

The American side are eager to hit the ground running when they make their F1 debut in 2026 at the season-opening Australian GP with their seasoned line-up of Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas.

That comes after American car company General Motors (GM) obtained approval in November 2024 for a team to join in the 2026 season, under the Cadillac brand.

In an interview at the F1 Pit Building on Oct 5, Cadillac boss Dan Towriss told The Straits Times that one of the main focuses of the team is on making an instant impact, as much as their emphasis on future planning.

“While we have these long-term ambitions, at the same time, we’re locked and loaded on Melbourne next year,” said Towriss, who is also the owner of motor racing team Andretti Global.

“We want that first race to go well, we want to compete. Yes, we are building a team for the future and want to have the right foundation, but at the same time, we’re here to compete out of the gate.

“We’re not happy just to be on the grid. We’re not happy just to be here. It’s an intense competition, the stakes are high, the pressure is high. We want to bring the very best we can to the track.

“We’ve been working on this for almost four years.”

The 53-year-old American businessman, who was making his first visit to Singapore, added that the Fishers, Indiana-based team want to “exceed expectations”.

And by the time the Cadillac team arrive at the Marina Bay Street Circuit for the 2026 race, he wants them to have beaten teams and “getting our cars going deep into qualifying”.

Playing a big role in that push will be the experience that Cadillac have brought on board.

Besides signing drivers Bottas and Perez in August, the team will be headed by team principal Graeme Lowdon, the former chief executive at the Virgin and Marussia F1 teams.

Bottas, currently a reserve driver with Mercedes, and former Red Bull driver Perez, boast 527 races, 16 victories and 106 podiums between them.

Former Alpine operations director Robert White is the team’s chief operating officer, head of aerodynamics Jon Tomlinson previously worked at Williams and Renault, while John McQuilliam is their chief designer after previous stints at the likes of Williams and Marussia.

Pat Symonds, who was the chief technical officer at Formula One from 2017 to 2024, will serve as the team’s executive engineering consultant.

Towriss, who revealed that Perez had already begun work on the Cadillac F1 simulator, explained how the duo were chosen, having looked at some former drivers and young drivers who are on the grid.

“Experience was the key. Speaking with Checo and Valtteri, that experience really rose to the top. So much is happening for the first time, and so to have them... and know what it’s supposed to look like and feel like is an essential element to building out the team.”

On whether the slew of changes, including new chassis and power unit regulations that will come into effect in 2026, will level the playing field for a new entrant like Cadillac, Towriss said: “From our standpoint, we don’t have a lot of the data to correlate our models and simulations to actual track data that the existing teams would have. So certainly, there’s an advantage (for them).

“A lot is changing in 2026, from the tyres to the chassis and the power unit, and so there’s just going to be so much learning that’s going to take place across the teams... and that levelises the playing field.”

While making an impactful debut season is their main aim, Cadillac are also looking to do well in the long term and avoid the fate of previous new entries who failed to maintain their places on the grid in the ultra-competitive sport.

Cadillac are the first new team on the grid since fellow American side Haas joined the fray in 2016.

While Haas have continued to be a mainstay, the four teams who joined in 2010 when the grid was expanded to 13 teams all failed to maintain their places.

The US F1 Team collapsed before the season even began, while the other three – Lotus Racing, Virgin and HRT – were stragglers and by 2017, they had all disappeared from F1.

But Towriss believes that the way Cadillac are structured, with “powerhouse shareholders” in automotive giant GM and TWG Motorsports, puts them in a strong position.

In April, governing body the International Automobile Federation approved GM as an official power unit supplier from the 2029 season onwards. Once the new operation is up and running, the American-built engines will power the Cadillac team.

For the first three seasons, the team will compete with Ferrari engines.

He said: “General Motors’ participation is as an equity partner in the team... and so the structure of that is built to last.

“It’s not a sponsorship the way we’ve seen other OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) sponsor F1 teams. And so it’s a structure that’s built to last, in terms of the strength of the shareholders.

“We certainly don’t want to be in the position that teams were in the past, and we’re not, with the group that we have.”