The next steps for Cadillac’s formally confirmed F1 entry

The news that Formula 1 has rubber-stamped Cadillac’s entry into the championship for 2026 is a small but important milestone for the Andretti-backed project, but what comes next is much more significant.

The General Motors squad – which will start out as a Ferrari customer engine team while it works to build its own engine to use from the 2028 F1 campaign – now has to clear a series of major steps in building up its team to be ready for its debut in grand prix racing.

Fully establish and link its F1 bases

The Cadillac project bears remarkable similarities at its current stage to F1’s existing American squad: Haas.

Both teams have established race bases in the UK – with Cadillac based in Silverstone alongside Aston Martin, with Haas down the road in Banbury. But they each have US headquarters too.

For Cadillac, this is its Performance Power Units company which will be opened in 2026 and will focus on building the team’s first F1 engine.

The team’s Silverstone base is already in operation, with its aerodynamics and mechanical design departments established for nearly a year across several large buildings near the home of the British GP.

Returning to the Haas comparison, Cadillac – helmed by team principal Graeme Lowdon – will need to carefully manage its communications across multiple sites based on different continents.

Design and build its 2026 car challenger

At one stage in this process, Andretti was aiming for a 2025 F1 entry, which would’ve required building a car for the current rules before the move to simplified engines and new chassis designs with additional moveable aerodynamic parts from next year. That complicated plan was abandoned when F1 initially rejected the project in early 2024, but Cadillac still has to nail the 2026 design process.

Like the 10 established F1 teams it will soon be joining, it was unable to start full-scale until 1 January 2025 – although scale model wind tunnel work built to old F1 design rules was permitted. But, unlike its rivals, it does not have to worry about balancing current car development resources with the future car project.

This will be of considerable advantage in terms of simplifying the process for Cadillac, but the team still has to get its 2026 design right if it wants to be competitive. Much of that potential will also be based on how potent the new Ferrari power unit is.

Fully hire and prep its race team

Cadillac will need at least 75 staff members to operate two cars at each F1 event, with the crew needing to be fully drilled and trained.

There is scope for mechanics and engineers from existing teams to move to the new project and the team has already hired several familiar F1 names – including Lowdon and Pat Symonds as an engineering consultant.

But for this particular task, the team is bolstered by its hiring of ex-Haas team manager Peter Crolla, a popular member of the Haas operation for its first 10 seasons before departing at the end of last year.

Graeme Lowdon in the Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber garage

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Sign its 2026 driver line-up

This is the most high-profile aspect of the process for Cadillac, given its entry is providing two extra seats and increases the likelihood of an American driver in the championship for the first time since Logan Sargeant was dropped from Williams last year.

Andretti Global driver Colton Herta is the early favourite to be signed based on his current team’s close links to the project.

Many successful IndyCar drivers such as triple and reigning champion Alex Palou will also be in the frame, as well as ex-F1 drivers Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez. These two will be valuable to a new team given their long experience with successful squads Mercedes and Red Bull respectively, with the latter also able to bring sponsorship money from the Mexican market where GM is a major player.

Another ex-F1 racer and current IndyCar star – Marcus Ericsson – has been helping Cadillac sort its first F1 simulator.

But one driver understood not to be in the frame is one-time Williams driver Jack Aitken, who currently races for the Action Express Cadillac squad in IMSA and Emil Frey Racing in the DTM, plus an outing set for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours.

Autosport understands Aitken considers his time as a single-seater racer to be over and, although he’d be open to helping Cadillac gear up for F1 in a behind-the-scenes manner like Ericsson, he is fully concentrating on his sportscar exploits.

Colton Herta, Andretti Global

Photo by: Penske Entertainment

Sign-off its F1 image and messaging

Never forget F1 is about ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ – even if for Haas that means selling complex machining tools and not road cars.

Cadillac is therefore a much more traditional project in this regard and so will likely look to repeat its powerful engine mantra deployed in IMSA and the World Endurance Championship – albeit via customer team operations in those cases.

Haas has resolutely deployed its position as ‘America’s F1 team’, with additional livery tweaks at its home races to highlight the claim it soon won’t be able to use exclusively.

It will be interesting to see how hard Cadillac pushes such a message given the whole idea of entering F1 is about gaining global visibility for a company’s offering.