– When Cadillac entered the top class as the eleventh racing team at the beginning of 2026, skepticism and concerns about a hopeless filler team were high. Looking at the pure results, one might come to this conclusion. Cadillac is the only team that has not yet scored a point and started from the last row in Hungary.
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But for team principal Graeme Lowdon, that does not tell the whole truth: “In my opinion, the performance is far ahead of what anyone outside the team expected,” he gives his team a good report card.
He is not only concerned with the pure results, but with all the things by which the newcomer is measured: “Namely how well we implemented things, whether we met the deadlines for the rollout of the car on the right day, were at the overall vehicle test bench at the right time, raced at the right time, and all the rest,” says Lowdon. “All of that was achieved.”
Whether that is enough to be perceived by fans and decision-makers more as a positive example of a new team or as a negative example is up to others to decide. “Because it is a relative game, it is really difficult for us internally to know exactly where we will be placed,” says the team principal.
He wants to highlight positively that they had Aston Martin, a “very established team,” under control for a long time. “In my opinion, that shows that everyone on the team did an excellent job. And also the fact that when we had problems, we were rightly measured by the same standard as every other team.”
Treated like a long-standing team
Because according to him, Cadillac was treated in various media reports as if they had been part of the paddock for a long time. “We can’t complain about that. I think it is actually quite a compliment that we are measured by the same standard, because it shows that we have appeared with a professional attitude.”
“We had respect for the competition – which we always said we would have. We are trying to build a platform for the future, and not just something like a ‘Boom, here we are’.”
Photo gallery: New Formula 1 teams since the 1990 season
When asked whether Cadillac has thereby raised the bar for potential future newcomers – such as a possible twelfth team – Lowdon answers confidently: “Honestly, yes. I think it shows and confirms the whole argument behind accepting a newly added team, because there are all kinds of horror stories about what such a thing could look like.”
“More important than the initial performance, in my opinion, is the fact that we have handed in our business card for the foundation of the future – and for how we want to approach things and that we really honestly want to bring something different and build a team that can also make a difference.”
Lack of development? Lowdon denies!
What there have been some critical reports about recently, however, was Cadillac’s development pace. Due to the extensive upgrade from Aston Martin, the newcomer has fallen back to last place in terms of power, which is also shown by the fact that Cadillac was alone in the last row for the first time this season in Hungary.
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Sergio Perez had therefore criticized that the team was not developing enough and needed to rethink its processes. But Lowdon does not see the issue so negatively. He emphasizes that Cadillac is developing the car “at a pretty high pace.”
“I know that is not always visible because we come from an area that is further back, but we are talking about tiny percentage points,” he says. “There is no scenario where you are 20 seconds behind the pace and the first ten seconds are easy or whatever.”
Photo gallery: The last double Q1 exit of every current Formula 1 team
“We started in Melbourne with a little over two percent deficit in pure pace, and by Monaco we were then 63 thousandths of a second short of Q2.”
Although he admits that Cadillac is currently chasing the field, “but when it comes to the difficulty of making up milliseconds when developing a car – because they are milliseconds – we are pretty much on the same path as everyone else.”
“Everyone in this paddock pushes extremely hard. So to develop faster than them, you not only have to push mega hard, it is mega hard. You really have to go full throttle, and that is exactly what we have tried,” says the team principal.
Why the brake problems are not so easy to solve
And: One has to acknowledge that Cadillac has only raced eleven Grands Prix so far, while the second youngest team is already at more than 200 – and other teams at more than 1,000. “So we are also building these foundations while trying to keep up. We encounter the same hurdles that other teams face.”
As an example, Lowdon cites the recurring brake problems due to lack of brake cooling, which have already caused many retirements and unpleasant moments. “That is a really difficult area in the development of a Formula 1 car,” he says.
“It is an area where know-how and intangible intellectual property are extremely important, and we cannot get that from anywhere else,” says Lowdon. “We cannot just take someone else’s brake ventilation design – people have done that in the past, but you are not allowed to.”
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“You have to go through this learning yourself, and publicly, while a few hundred million people watch. So the task is not easy, but I think the team has done a spectacular job.”
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