A long-shot American dream hits the F1 grid as Cadillac debuts at the Australian GP

Melbourne, Australia — When the lights go out at Albert Park for Sunday’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Formula 1 will welcome its first new constructor in a decade. Cadillac F1, decked out in red-white-and-blue branding and powered temporarily by Ferrari engines, will roll onto the grid carrying the hopes of an American motorsport ambition that refused to die.

The project traces its roots to Michael Andretti’s five-year campaign to place an American-flagged team in F1. After repeated rejections, Andretti handed the effort to a new ownership consortium—TWG Motorsports principals Mark Walter and Dan Towriss, together with General Motors—who doubled down on development, quietly building a car and power-unit program even before receiving official entry. Their persistence paid off exactly one year ago, when Formula 1 granted the 11th-team slot and imposed a $200 million anti-dilution fee to protect existing competitors’ prize-money shares.

Cadillac’s debut car, designated MAC-26 (Mario Andretti Cadillac), honors America’s last F1 world champion, Mario Andretti, whose 1978 title remains the most recent by a U.S. driver. Mexican veteran Sergio “Checo” Pérez and Finnish race winner Valtteri Bottas will pilot the entries, a lineup chosen for both experience and marketing muscle—Pérez’s star power in Mexico dovetails neatly with GM’s sizable vehicle sales in the region.

The team’s technical footprint spans three continents: GM’s power-unit facility sits adjacent to Hendrick Motorsports outside Charlotte, North Carolina; chassis design and assembly operate from a base near Silverstone, England; and several support functions run out of Fishers, Indiana. After January shakedown laps at Silverstone, Cadillac logged mileage in official preseason tests at Barcelona and Bahrain, preparing for what most observers predict will be a learning-year campaign while GM completes its own power unit, targeted for 2027.

Cadillac will lease Ferrari power for its first two seasons, mirroring the path taken by fellow American entrant Haas in 2016. Yet Cadillac executives bristle at comparisons, insisting their long-term vision is broader than merely fielding cars. “We didn’t come into Formula 1 to look like every other team,” Towriss said. “We started with big dreams, ran into a cacophony of no’s, and now we’re ready to find out how quickly we can compete.”

Off-track, the organization leans heavily on branding overseen by Cassidy Towriss, Dan’s wife, whose marketing directives draw on both historical knowledge—she can cite 1990s Benetton liveries from memory—and a demographic lens the series covets: a 31-year-old female perspective. Her influence is expected to feature in the next season of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive,” amplifying Cadillac’s push to be perceived as America’s team despite Haas’s prior, and largely uncelebrated, decade in the sport.

Colton Herta, currently racing in F2, waits in the wings as the team’s prospective American driver, a narrative Cadillac openly promotes. Should Herta earn the necessary super-licence points, he would become the first U.S. driver in F1 since Logan Sargeant’s 2023 departure, cementing Cadillac’s national-branding pitch.

General Motors President Mark Reuss frames the F1 program as central to Cadillac’s repositioning among global luxury marques. “To bring Cadillac back to the tier-one set of global luxury brands, F1 is a vital part of the equation,” Reuss said.

For Towriss, the Australian debut is less a finish line than a green flag. “It’s really just the beginning,” he said. “We’ve come at this incredibly complex, competitive time from a standing start. We’re jumping in, ready to go find out.”

Cadillac F1, born from a rejected Andretti vision and forged by private-capital resolve, now faces the sport’s hardest test: translating audacious ambition into lap time. On Sunday, the world—and a record Melbourne crowd—will witness the first chapter of that story unfold.