How Cadillac’s Formula 1 Team Is Struggling for Stability and Success

Eric Warren worked in defense and at NASA prior to his current role as vice president for Global Motorsport Competition at General Motors. Top tier motor racing isn’t rocket science; in many ways it’s more difficult than that. “I hesitate to say we should have won,” he says of Cadillac’s performance earlier this year in the 24 Hours of Le Mans (with Hertz Team Jota), “but we certainly could have won, and that’s a big step forward.”

The truth is, GM has serious form here, more than it gets credit for, with lots more to come. Ford’s motorsport-crazy C.E.O. Jim Farley is a passionate, high-profile advocate for the Blue Oval’s racing exploits, but GM comfortably eclipses Ford in terms of multidiscipline commitment. WEC, IMSA, NASCAR, IndyCar, the NHRA, off-road truck racing, Australian supercars—GM is highly active in all of it.

But it’s Cadillac’s presence in Formula 1 that’s indicative of the mothership’s ambitions for its increasingly impressive luxury brand. From zero to debuting at the Australian GP earlier this year was no mean feat, and it earned the hat-tip respect of rivals. But for all that F1 is as a globally effective shop window with unparalleled reach among key new demographics, simply showing up is categorically not enough. Cadillac has endured some persistent reliability issues and needs to surmount them.

“We want to compete for wins. We wouldn’t be in it if we didn’t plan on competing for wins—in every category we’re racing in worldwide, not just F1,” Warren says firmly. “I’ve been around some defense industry stuff, NASA is my background, and I’ve seen a lot of amazing things. But these new F1 engines are incredible. These are tools that are working hard. You’re also constantly analyzing data. There’s no more data-rich environment than this.”

As the F1 season heads onto the home straight, and with both the Austin and Vegas Grands Prix races in prospect, it’s a useful time to recap how the U.S. newcomer has been doing. GM’s big F1 play, of course, grew out of Andretti Motorsport’s bid to become the 11th team in the elite race series. As ever in this intensely political world, various forces had to align, and big names placated, before things could progress. Existing stakeholders had to be mollified so that F1’s prize fund could grow to accommodate a new team rather than be diluted. (I recall Christian Horner, former principal for the Red Bull F1 Team, being especially vocal on this matter.)

Dan Towriss, C.E.O. of TWG Motorsports (and now of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team as well), assumed control of the bid, and made the approach. Towriss has the energy and vibe of one of the main characters in Showtime’s Billions saga. GM’s vice president of Performance and Motorsports, Jim Campbell, remembers meeting him and his wife in a lift on the way to an IndyCar function a few years ago. Had GM thought about F1? “It really was an elevator pitch,” Campbell says. Internally, the conversations began in 2022.

“We saw the potential and you could argue we got in on it a little bit late,” Warren attests. “But we’re still pretty early on the growth cycle. It was a matter of opportunity. It was important that we didn’t just sponsor, we want to be a critical part of it, to collaborate fully. We get in and race in all the series we do, although we support teams differently in each. If we come in, we’re coming in as partners. Strategy platforms, tools, setups, simulators, aero, CFD . . . everything that it takes to design and build a car, we do.”

The opportunity to partner with TWG was key, but so too was the introduction of the cost cap in F1 (initiated in 2021, set at $215 million for 2026). Technical transfer for Cadillac and throughout the wider group is part of the mission, but anyone who has attended an F1 race recently will know that the brand-building possibilities are phenomenal—think Coachella with a motor race attached. The so-called “fan zones” are becoming bigger and more ambitious at every race. “We want to build the Cadillac brand, for the fans. The demographic is changing and getting younger. A lot of things are lining up,” Campbell says.

As is the direction of travel on the power-train front. F1’s nominal 50-50 internal combustion/electric hybrid format has proven controversial at best and is actively disliked by many of the drivers. The farcical situation that unfolded at last weekend’s Bahrain GP–held in Sepang, in Malaysia–has only deepened the malaise: a software bug left Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, and others stranded on the track prior to a system reboot and restart. It was not a good look.

The auto manufacturers who are the commercial mainstays of Formula 1 demand an emphasis on electrification and sustainability. But the requirements for energy management and power-starved engines have compromised pure racing—particularly in terms of overtaking and cornering speeds—throughout the 2026 season. Although, as ever, it depends on who you ask.

Cadillac is currently constructing a power-train manufacturing facility in Concord, N.C, bolstering bases in Silverstone and Indiana, the aim being for the team to have its own engine good-to-go for the 2029 season. (It’s currently using Ferrari’s power unit.) The proposed return to a V-8 is presumably good news for the all-American team, right?

“We need to work in both directions, the hybrid V-6, the current platform, but also keep an eye on the V-8,” says Warren cautiously. “Our statement on this is that we want to support the series. Certainly, we have a lot of products with V-8s in the Americas. It’s in the Cadillac hypercar. We do lots of engines, we’ve raced in a lot of series . . . We like the sound of a [V-8], a lot of the elements, get some cost out of it . . . there’s a lot of positives, but I think it’s about trying to support the series. We want something that’s exciting for the fans and the competitors, and for the series.”

Is it imperative that Cadillac runs an American driver? Warren plays it down. Finding the home-grown equivalent of Mercedes-AMG’s break-out superstar Kimi Antonelli is desirable but not essential. “We want to be authentically American, certainly regarding ownership and everything. But we want to race competitively. There’s a pathway to get to that, but just putting an American in there when the car’s not ready or the team’s not ready, just to say it’s American, no. We want to continue progressing and we knew it was going to be hard,” Warren continues. “It’s difficult for me to say that we’re happy, because every week you want to see progression. We’re proud of what it’s taken to get here. But there’s a difference being proud and being happy . . . that’s the long-term goal. We won’t be happy until we compete for wins.”

It also seems that patience in getting to that point is decidedly finite. Robb Report spoke to Graeme Lowdon, Cadillac’s team principal, during the Hungarian GP earlier this year. A well-liked figure in the paddock, Lowdon was instrumental in realizing Cadillac’s F1 dream from a blank sheet of paper. Personnel, infrastructure, design, engineering, coffee machines—the lot.

“We’re not just here to make up the numbers. We have a bold ambition to build a substantial and successful team, but it does take some time,” Lowden explained when we spoke. “I was talking to another team principal, discussing a particularly successful stage at one team. ‘Yeah, you know the reason for that success was the six years of failure beforehand,’ he reminded me. People forget just how long it takes to get there. But this is a sport where it’s maximum attack all the time on every front. The common denominator in sustained success is stability.”

Note the past tense in describing Lowdon’s role. When I mentioned to Lowdon that figures like Dan Towriss aren’t generally known for being patient, he forced a smile. It’s likely to have been the last interview he did as Cadillac’s team principal. Despite his insistence on stability, Towriss evidently disagreed. Lowdon was fired shortly after we spoke, and had no inkling it was coming.

“It wasn’t a mutual decision,” Towriss explained in a media call shortly after. “The process started a few months ago: really thinking about what the next phase for Cadillac Formula 1, what’s the right timing, how would that look, and then the capabilities of the various folks out there.”

Cadillac F1’s new team principal is ex-Alpine F1 executive director Marcin Budkowski. With the team up and running, improving on-track competitiveness is now critical. As we head into this weekend’s Singapore GP, the team has come tantalizingly close but has yet to score any championship points. One of its drivers, Valtteri Bottas, elected to ride a bicycle from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore rather than fly. It’s a distance of around 220 miles, which should give him time to think.

“There’s no easy way to make this transition within Formula 1 . . . It does compress the decision-making, the timeline, and how these things come together,” Towriss admits. “It makes it feel more abrupt than it would otherwise be. But it’s the nature of Formula 1 and it’s the way it had to happen.” Formula 1 is famously known as the “piranha club.” Results are all that matter. And while Cadillac has arrived, it must now prove as hungry and aggressive as the others.

Click here for more photos of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team.