Cadillac is entering Formula 1 with big-brand swagger and a long-term plan to race with American-made engines by the end of the decade. In the short term, expectations are brutally realistic, but this is still a team intent on making noise from day one.
That intent will be made clear when Cadillac unveils the livery of its first F1 car during a Super Bowl commercial Sunday. Such a move is a statement and arrival aimed as much at mainstream America as at a paddock that, for years, questioned whether the brand belonged on the grid at all.
Race winners Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas, familiar faces to any Formula 1 fan, will line up as the team’s drivers at its debut, the Australian Grand Prix on March 8. But how did they get there? What are the team’s expectations? And what’s the story behind its big-money car reveal Sunday?
Here’s everything you need to know about F1’s newest American team.
Why now for F1’s 11th team?
Cadillac is the first team to join Formula 1 in a decade: Haas, owned by American toolmaker Gene Haas, was the last to do so, in 2016. The sport has changed fundamentally in that time.
It is now owned by Americans in Liberty Media, which has transformed the sport from top to bottom. A boom in popularity and global relevance, often credited to Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” and later crystallized by the 2025 blockbuster movie “F1,” laid the foundations for expansion from 10 to 11 teams. That turned the idea of “an American team” from a novelty into a commercial gold mine, but it was still a rocky road from concept to deliverance.
Originally fronted by former IndyCar champion Michael Andretti, son of racing legend Mario, the project was snubbed by Formula 1’s existing teams, which were reluctant to dilute a rapidly growing prize fund by admitting an upstart entry. Effectively, the other teams believed they had been at the table when the feast was less bountiful but had stuck with it, so why should a new dinner guest waltz in and get to enjoy it the same as them now that the party was rocking?
Even General Motors’ decision to increase its own involvement, shuffling Michael Andretti out of the project and formally adding the Cadillac name to the bid, did not loosen the opposition at first, leading to the U.S. Congress to question whether F1’s stance violated the country’s anti-competition laws. “We ran into a lot of obstacles, a lot of voices telling us not just ‘no,’ but ‘never,'” said Dan Towriss, head of TWG Motorsports, the company working with General Motors on the project, in November.
Cadillac’s eventual entry came with a significant financial concession. Under Formula 1’s regulations, new teams are required to pay an anti-dilution fee to compensate existing competitors for the impact on prize money, with Cadillac agreeing to pay $200 million for a seat at that table.
Why no American driver?
One of the stated aims of the original Andretti bid was to debut with an American driver, yet Cadillac will line up with Mexico’s Pérez and Finland’s Bottas. That represented the best available lineup to Cadillac: two drivers with race-winning experience and who both experienced championship-winning teams from the inside — Pérez as Max Verstappen‘s teammate at Red Bull and Bottas as Lewis Hamilton‘s running mate at Mercedes. With the learning curve expected to be steep, getting experience for both sides of the garage was seen as key in helping the team progress.
Waiting on the sidelines is perhaps the future of the team: American driver Colton Herta has been signed on an academy deal, while he will also compete in the Formula 2 feeder series to prepare for a future step up to the F1 grid. That’s quite an unprecedented step for a driver of his age and experience: Herta, 25, won nine races over eight seasons in IndyCar before making the switch. This will not only help him grow accustomed to the circuits and tires used in F1 but will likely help him secure the FIA Super Licence points required to be granted a place on the grid.
China’s Zhou Guanyu is also signed as a reserve driver, effectively the man ready to deputize should Bottas or Pérez be unable to race at any weekend, after a similar stint with Ferrari last year.
When will the GM engine be ready?
General Motors’ commitment to building engines that will be used by the F1 team by 2028 or 2029 also helped ease the opposition to the team’s bid. Cadillac will race with Ferrari power for its first two seasons at least while its engine program gets off the ground.
GM’s power unit facility is near its technical center in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of several buildings being used to push the team forward. The team’s primary headquarters in the U.K. — where the majority of F1 teams are based — is in a facility near the Silverstone race circuit, but it also has F1 operations being run out of Fishers, Indiana.
Super Bowl, super introduction
It’s hard to ignore the irony of how Cadillac plans to mark its arrival. For years, some existing teams privately (and sometimes not so privately) baulked at the idea of a new entry because of prize money dilution and lingering skepticism about whether a newcomer would or could genuinely add value to the championship. And that value language wasn’t just paddock gossip — it sat at the heart of Formula One Management’s original rejection of the Andretti Cadillac proposal in early 2024.
Now fast-forward to the launch of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team: Before the car has even turned a wheel in competition, Cadillac has already landed a livery reveal via a Super Bowl commercial — one of the most expensive and coveted slots in global sport and advertising — and used it to sell not just a team, but the idea of F1 itself to mainstream America. It’s one hell of a flex, and something that should hammer home just how serious the Cadillac team is.
“We didn’t come into Formula 1 to look like every other team, to copy what McLaren is doing or what Mercedes is doing,” Towriss recently said of the Super Bowl ad. “We want to bring our own authentic and unique approach to that, which is going to be very much a distinctly American brand by leaning into that entertainment aspect.”
Is this F1’s real American team?
F1 has had an American team since Haas’ arrival in 2016, but it has never truly embraced that moniker in the way many fans Stateside had wished. Gene Haas has appeared irked by the suggestion his team should lean into its roots more and never explored an American pipeline in the way Cadillac already has with Herta.
Beyond Herta, though, there are obvious signs that this team is going to be unashamedly patriotic. The team’s ad announcing the livery reveal also featured the voice of President John F. Kennedy, while Finland’s Bottas announced his own move to the team on a jet ski while holding the Star-Spangled Banner.
Towriss and Cadillac have almost ignored completely Haas’ roots in its own preview of the season.
“Formula 1 is innovation on the biggest stage possible, and the U.S. didn’t really have a seat at that table. To now come in with General Motors and the Cadillac brand, that’s something we’re tremendously proud of,” Towriss said. “There’s definitely a national pride element to Cadillac. It feels like the right place at the right time — where Formula 1 is globally, where Cadillac is as a brand, and where the U.S. is on the world sporting stage.”
Just what should we expect?
Beyond the razzmatazz and big-money announcements, Cadillac has made a point of keeping expectations in check. Newer teams have had mixed success in F1. While Haas scored points on its debut, the three new teams that joined in 2010 — Caterham, Virgin Racing and HRT — were all perennial back markers and collapsed within years of entry.
Those were different days, though, and F1 now has a budget cap that restricts the spending of each team, something that has clearly leveled the playing field considerably since its introduction in 2021. In theory, that means an easier time for Cadillac to catch up, but having started completely from scratch, expectations are still very low for the new year.
Cadillac effectively has to create a modern F1 operation in line with teams that have been competing for at least a decade. No easy feat. Its first task was being ready enough to deliver a car to F1’s private “shakedown” test, which it did, completing 164 laps in the process. That left Cadillac on the lower end of the mileage scale among the teams that appeared, but just being able to show up and run the car showed it is on schedule. The reaction coming out of the team was very much of a project embarking on a long journey, one expected to be painful in the early goings.
“The biggest takeaway is that I’m proud of everyone working so hard and being here with the car,” Bottas said at the end of the shakedown. “But also, we have a long way to go. We still have lots of problems to solve and a bit of a mountain to climb, but we are getting there, step by step. Each run, we’re getting better and more together as a team, each run we’re solving issues and going forward.”
No one is expecting miracles from Cadillac early on, but make no mistake, America’s team is dead serious about Formula 1 and hopes to use 2026 as a springboard to future success.
