Cadillac boss reveals new team’s ‘first target’ ahead of F1 2026 debut

Cadillac’s “first target” in F1 has been revealed by team principal Graeme Lowdon.

The American outfit are joining F1 in 2026 as the 11th team on the grid and have announced the signing of Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas to form a highly-experienced driver line-up.

Cadillac’s preparations for their debut F1 campaign are ramping up ahead of an extensive pre-season testing programme and opening race weekend in Australia on the weekend of 6-8 March.

The team even staged a full simulation of the recent Italian Grand Prix with Cadillac staff working remotely from its two bases at Silverstone in the UK and Charlotte in the United States.

"The first thing to recognise is this game is unbelievably competitive,” Lowdon told F1.com. "I've often said Formula 1 is actually a very simple business model and a very simple technical model actually because you download it.

"Anyone watching at home can download all of the regulations off the internet. But there lies the problem. You have 11 teams, previously 10 teams, competing on exactly the same set of regulations.

"They can't invent a different kind of car or anything else. The regulations are super tight and so the competition is absolutely insane and intense and we have to recognise that.

"I guess the way I try and communicate to other people is, imagine if you're one of these existing teams, all of them have been doing this for at least 10 years, if not significantly longer.

"If a new team were to come in and immediately be competitive against them, then you'd be pretty upset and pretty angry. And so, we know it's a huge challenge. It's very difficult to quantify what success can look like other than we just have to execute as well as we possibly can and gain respect from the other competitors.

"I think that's always the first target because, if we do that, then we know that we will be doing a good job.”

Cadillac ‘on schedule’ with first F1 car

Lowdon also gave a positive update on the progress of the team’s 2026 car, which will be powered by Ferrari engines.

"The good news is it [the new car, which will be built to sweeping new chassis and power unit regulations] is coming along. It’s on schedule. We are currently laying up the first two race chassis,” he explained.

"We built a prototype chassis some time ago and we use that chassis to do all of the equivalent FIA homologation tests. So, there's some very onerous squeeze tests and also the rather dramatic impact tests, which is quite a significant test.

"We've already built the prototype, went through all those tests. We are probably the first team that has done as well, because obviously the other teams have got learnings from their '25 cars and '24 cars and everything.

"We wanted to do that to give ourselves confidence that when we're building the race chassis, we've got a high degree of confidence that we should pass the homologation tests. But now we're actually laying up the actual race chassis and it's on schedule and it's really cool to see."