Cadillac has already ticked off plenty of its 2026 to do list, in not looking like breaching the 107% qualifying rule and getting two cars to the finish at the second attempt in the Chinese Grand Prix.
With those goals achieved, this is not the time for F1’s newest team to rest on their laurels as the scale of their medium and long terms competitive aims has already hit home at the General Motors backed entry.
While the latest American team to join the F1 grid is another to have been built from the ground up after Haas joined the grid, at its core for 2026 is decades of F1 experience with Team Principal Graeme Lowdon having formerly been in charge at 2010 new team Virgin, latterly Marussia, until 2015. Executive Engineering Consultant Pat Symonds having previously worked for Benetton and Renault at Team Enstone and later Williams, while drivers Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas have 14 and 12 years’ experience in F1 respectively.
With the prospect of points an unlikely one for 2026, we take a look at what milestones and achievements would represent a successful debut season for Cadillac.
Consistently Clean Weekends
While Cadillac have gotten two cars to the finish faster than World Champions McLaren, neither weekend has been trouble free for the team, which follows a winter schedule in which the team was ahead of only the beleaguered Aston Martin Honda entry in terms of mileage completed across the two official Tests in Bahrain.
In Australia, Perez only managed 16 laps across the first two practice sessions as reliability issues hobbled the Mexican former Red Bull driver, while Bottas was able only to complete 12 laps on Saturday morning ahead of qualifying before retiring with an engine failure after 15 laps in the race.
In China, Perez was once again hamstrung on Friday morning.
He only completed 13 laps in the sole practice session of the first Sprint weekend of the season before failing to set a time in Sprint qualifying, and having his Sprint race and Grand Prix Qualifying were once again compromised as deployment issues set the 36-year-old back. Those gremlins would last into the race, notwithstanding a clumsy collision with Bottas at the start of the Grand Prix.
This ultra-complicated era of Formula One engine regulations have caused problems for numerous teams including the aforementioned McLaren, who failed to start with either Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri in Shanghai on Sunday, while Audi have yet to have both scares start a Grand Prix this season and Red Bull have had at least one retirement in each Grand Prix so far, so this inexperienced at ground level team are far from alone.
Nevertheless, the team will be targeting cleaner weekends as it attempts to build a better understanding of its car and the new era.
Taking advantage of F1 experience inside the team
We earlier referenced the F1 experience that Cadillac does have including a combined 26 seasons of experience across its driver lineup.
Few were enthralled when it was announced that Bottas and Perez would be taking the two race seats ahead of an unlikely berth for now F2 and Cadillac development driver Colton Herta, himself an Indycar race winner.
Coming into the season, the two men had 16 grand prix wins and 527 starts between them. Both drivers have been part of dominant F1 teams in their career, with Bottas a fine understudy to Lewis Hamilton for five seasons from 2017 through to 2021 at Mercedes, while Perez was at Red Bull for four seasons during their return to domination with the all-conquering Max Verstappen up until his untimely departure in 2024.
Both are known to have strong technical feedback which should help the team build a better understanding of their car in more timely fashion compared to an inexperienced rookie, and they will be able to bring to the team elite level processes after recent stints with two behemoths of Formula One.
Cadillac CEO Dan Towriss pointed to the experience brought by the two drivers when both men were announced for 2026 back in August last year.
In Team Principal Lowdon it has a man experienced in starting a Formula One team from Ground Zero. While Virgin’s ambitions and scale did not compare to the plans that Cadillac will eventually have, Lowdon has seen the challenges the team will face all before. Given the difficult birth that Virgin suffered, including a fuel tank that began 2010 too small to complete a Grand Prix, he is equipped to solve problems that new teams will face and implementing processes across an entirely new team.
With Symonds in an Engineering Consultancy role, the team has a man who’s been involved in the good – and bad – of Formula One with his time encompassing title victories at Benetton with Michael Schumacher and Renault with Fernando Alonso. He was a key part of the leadership team during his time there and was in a consultancy role when Lowdon was in charge at Virgin-Marussia.
The presence of both Bottas and Perez have given the new team instant credibility and tapping into the F1 experience and nous they already have will be vital to the team’s short and medium term progress.
Getting on to the back of the midfield
Cadillac’s pace is at the higher end of where they were expected to start in 2026, but over a single lap they are still behind even the troubled Aston Martin package, and while they have been clear in the races that is mostly down to the reliability measures Honda have had to take.
They were a thrice lapped 16th with Perez in Melbourne, while both drivers were lapped down in 13th and 15th in China, albeit aided by a Safety Car after 10 laps as Lance Stroll retired.
The Ferrari Power Unit that the team has until at least 2028 is a competitive one bested only by Mercedes at this stage of the season, and with the current generation of cars being so young the rate of development will be huge, and Perez did tentatively target points by the end of the season when speaking after the Chinese Grand Prix.
Time will tell whether that proves to be realistic this season, but there is only so long that the team will accept being on the back row and a second off the next nearest team.
The team will learn a lot about how well they can develop a car throughout their debut season ahead of providing a solid base for a more competitive 2027.
Image: Pirelli F1 Media
