Cadillac will enter Formula 1 in 2026: Around 500 employees are currently working behind the scenes on the project, which is reminiscent of the Apollo moon missions …
While the ten current Formula 1 teams are battling it out for the last Grand Prix victories of the current season, the eleventh team is competing in a completely different race: Cadillac is preparing intensively for its debut next year – both in the USA and at Silverstone.
“It’s not as difficult as it sounds,” explains team boss Graeme Lowdon in an interview with Sky. “The reality is that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to hire all the people and get them to the right places in time. We’ve designed the entire company so that it doesn’t matter where you work within the team – whether in Fishers, Charlotte, North Carolina or Silverstone.”
“We’ve been dealing with complex technical challenges that had to be overcome in a very short time,” the Brit continues, drawing an unusual comparison: “The closest thing to what we’re trying to do is the Apollo missions that landed on the moon. Well, we’re not landing on the moon, but…”
Entering Formula 1 obviously presents the team with similar challenges. “We now have almost 500 people working on the project,” reports Lowdon. “Part of our job is to simulate the entire race weekend.”
Cadillac team boss: “Really large fan base in the US”
This means that while the other ten teams are battling for points on the track, Cadillac is competing as a “ghost team,” so to speak, and is already gaining valuable experience for the coming season. For a long time, it wasn’t even certain whether the Formula 1 entry would be successful at all.
“We went through this process of trying to recruit the best people we could find without knowing whether we would even get permission to start,” recalls Lowdon. “The best way was to just build the team without waiting for approval.”
“That cost hundreds of millions before there was any certainty,” emphasizes the team boss. “Then Mario Andretti says, ‘Okay, great, we really want this start, Graham, don’t let us down.’ And you think, ‘This is the 1978 Formula 1 world champion.’”
But the Briton’s efforts have paid off: Formula 1 entry has long been secured. “When I walk around with the Cadillac logo on my shirt, people constantly come up to me,” reveals Lowdon. “A lot of people want to support the team. Only now are we beginning to realize how big the fan base in the US really is.”
