ABU DHABI: As the curtains closed on the 2025 Formula One season in Abu Dhabi last weekend, excitement was already setting in for what will be a radically different 2026 campaign.

Not only will a new set of regulations come into play next season, but a brand-new team will join the grid in the form of Cadillac Formula 1 Team.

Backed by TWG Motorsports and General Motors, Cadillac will make its debut in 2026 as F1 expands to 11 teams.

With the US hosting three of the 24 races in the calendar and proving to be a key growth market for F1 in recent years, Cadillac are leaning into their American identity and plan to launch with a bang, revealing their car livery in a TV advertisement during February’s Super Bowl. A Keanu Reeves-hosted documentary that will tell the story of Cadillac’s long journey towards joining F1 is also in the works.

“We’ve been very open that we want to be the American team,” Cadillac team principal Graeme Lowdon told Arab News in an interview at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last week. “There are few things in this world more American than the Super Bowl, so it would be really great to be part of the festivities around that amazing event.

“We said when we were coming into Formula One that we wanted to attract new fans — for the team, but for Formula One as well. And I think initiatives like this will do that.”

While Cadillac will initially rely on Ferrari to supply the engine for their cars, GM plan to be the team’s supplier by the start of the 2029 season.

“They don’t think we have it. They don’t think we’re going to deliver,” GM president Mark Reuss said in a behind-the-scenes video released on the company’s YouTube channel. “And I love to prove people wrong.”

Lowdon is fully aware of the massive challenge ahead and admits there is an element of satisfaction in proving people wrong.

“It’s partly a reflection of the entry process itself — it is incredibly rigorous this time around. And it lasted a long time as well. And there were people who were very negative towards the team coming in,” explained the British principal, whose wealth of F1 experience includes being sporting director with Marussia/Manor and being part of the management team of China’s first F1 driver, Zhou Guanyu. “There’s always that little thing in your mind that it would be nice to prove people wrong. But to be honest, that’s not really what the team’s about. It’s more about proving it to ourselves.

“Formula One is an incredibly difficult sport. It’s hugely competitive. And for sure, we want to do well, but we know how difficult it is. It’s not an easy sport to come into. I think if we can execute well as a team, then for sure we’ll take more than just mild satisfaction from it,” Lowdon continued. “We very proudly carry the Cadillac badge. It’s a fantastic brand. It’s a globally recognized brand. It’s one that we’re very proud to represent. Nothing would give me more pleasure, personally, than being able to deliver a team that allows General Motors to be proud of as well. I hope that we’re able to give that sense of satisfaction to everybody in GM.”

Capitalizing on US fandom

The surge in interest in F1 in the US has been enormous. Survey figures released in August showed that the sport’s American fanbase has reached 52 million and is the largest F1 market for YouTube viewership (135 million) and social media followers (5.8 million — up 26 percent year-on-year).

The Netflix docuseries “Drive to Survive,” which premiered in 2019, and this year’s Brad Pitt-led “F1” movie have contributed to the sport’s soaring popularity and Lowdon explained why he thinks F1 has resonated so deeply with Americans.

“When I think of America, I think of team sports a lot,” he said. “American fans love team sports. (American football, basketball)… these are all team sports. Also, part of our ownership is TWG, who are the majority owners of (Los Angeles’ basketball and baseball teams) the Lakers and the Dodgers. So, we’ve seen firsthand the vision (of) our American owners and how they go about team sports.

“I think Formula One is the greatest team sport in the world. It’s sometimes seen as an individual sport, because all sports need heroes and, quite rightly, the drivers are the heroes in Formula One. But if there was no one to design the car or put the wheels on the car, it doesn’t matter how good the driver is, they’re not going to win a grand prix. So I think it’s the greatest team sport in the world. There are a thousand players on every side and it’s our job to put the best team that we possibly can together. I think that resonates with American fans.”

Lowdon has already witnessed the excitement that is building ahead of Cadillac’s debut. “When we were in Austin earlier this year and walked out of the hotel wearing a shirt with Cadillac on, people were stopping us on the street and saying, ‘We can’t wait to follow the team, we can’t wait to support it. We’re proud to see Cadillac on the grid.’ And that’s fantastic. These are quite often fans who are very new to Formula One. I hope we can play a part in the growth of the sport in North America.”

Experience matters

While there has been a lot of emphasis on bringing young blood into F1 — six of the drivers on the 2025 grid were aged 23 and under — for their debut season Cadillac have opted for an experienced lineup of Valtteri Bottas and Sergio “Checo” Perez, who, between them, have 527 grands prix under their belts.

“We did go for experience. But first and foremost, we went for speed,” said Lowdon. “We choose our drivers on merit. Valtteri and Checo have 16 grand prix wins between them. These guys know what they’re doing and they’re fast. They’re very, very fast. Both in a race environment, but also in a qualifying environment. Both of them have had multiple pole positions. So that overrides everything.

“But secondly, they’ve got vast experience of working with other teams,” he continued. “We’re pulling together a brand-new team here. We’ve got literally thousands of years of experience at Formula One within the team, but less than one year of working together as Cadillac Formula 1 Team. So having drivers who understand what it takes to gel (with) the engineering group and the mechanics and everyone else is very, very important. And with Valtteri and Checo, we get that.”

Lowdon noted that F1 can be a very unforgiving place, and that joining a new team would have been an incredibly challenging task for first-time drivers.

“We can’t do an extensive test program this year. Some of the rookies who were on the grid this year did literally thousands of kilometers of testing in TPC cars – testing of a previous car. We don’t have one, so we can’t. So, I think, all in all, we’re super happy with the driver lineup. It’s the right lineup for us as a team,” he said.

Countdown is on

There are multiple clocks hanging on the walls of all of the teams’ offices, counting down to key events, like the car fire-up, shakedown, and the Melbourne Grand Prix — the first race of the season. Time is the enemy, but Lowdon is feeling good about the progress Cadillac have made so far.

“Car build is fully underway at the moment; it’s on schedule,” he said. “There are numerous FIA homologation tests that every team has to pass and we’ve passed the majority of those. We’ve got very few left to do. So, we’re probably slightly ahead in terms of where some of the other teams are. So, we’re really happy with the progress. And it’s busy. There’s a lot happening. Because at the same time we’re doing all this, we’re building factories and hiring people and stuff as well.”

F1 is more competitive and more technically-involved than it was the last time Lowdon was directly involved in the sport, but he said that the stability in regulations makes for easier planning. “Fifteen years ago, they were changing almost every week,” he noted.

While starting with a blank canvas has its advantages, Lowdon stressed that the challenges of joining an F1 grid for the first time far outweigh the perks of spending an entire year focused on 2026. For one, the team will be operating without having any on-track data from a 2025 car, and no matter how many simulations they’ve run so far, they don’t mean much without verification against a car on the track.

With those challenges in mind, Lowdon is refraining from making any predictions regarding Cadillac’s performance next year. 

“It’s very difficult to predict anything for next year in terms of championship standings, even after testing or first race or whatever, because it’s so new for everybody,” he said. “To be honest, you’ll get that same answer from everyone. Nobody knows who’s going to have a good car, bad car, whatever. So, what does success mean for us? Success for us is measuring ourselves against all of the things that we actually have in our control — how well we execute.

“We don’t know how good the car is going to be relative to the other cars, but we know that everything that we’re doing, we want to execute well,” he continued. “So, if we have that excellence in execution, then that’s our first indicator that we’re hopefully heading in the right direction.”

‘We want to do things a little bit differently’

Adding two more cars to the grid was far from an easy decision for the powers that be, and many have questioned what value another team can add to what is already a thriving sport.

“In really simple terms, we just want to bring the fans more cars, more drivers, more action,” said Lowdon. “But, actually, it’s way more than that. We’ve said all along we want to do things a little bit differently. We are a truly American team. We want to appeal to some new audiences and existing audiences as well. And we just want to contribute.

“Hopefully, one of our key value pillars is to be a leader in innovation. We want to try and innovate in lots of ways, not just technically, but also in how we interact with fans. The Super Bowl initiative is a good example of that. I’m not aware that a Formula 1 team has ever done that before, so there’s some innovation straight away,” he continued. “And (we want to) just try to give more reasons for fans to love Formula One, really. That’s kind of the essence of why we’re here.”