Updated March 6, 2026 at 1:23 PM CST
For the first time in a decade, a new manufacturer has joined the world of Formula 1: Cadillac.
The new team is the culmination of a years-long effort to enter the multi-billion dollar global motorsport series. The agreement to join the grid was only finalized in March 2025. That left Cadillac with about a year to build a car to compete with storied F1 names like Mercedes and McLaren.
The team nodded to the scale of the challenge during the Super Bowl commercial that revealed the car's livery. The black-and-white color scheme emerged as President John F. Kennedy's 1962 speech urging America to go to the Moon played underneath. Choosing to take on missions "not because they are easy, but because they are hard" is clearly a mantra Cadillac is adopting. Cadillac even built a facility in the UK before the team's F1 bid was approved.
"We had this storied journey where we had to build the team, in a sense, before we had an entry," said Dan Towriss, CEO of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team.
"This project is so complex, even now, walking through the factory, seeing all the things that had to be built," Towriss added. "There are some 43,000 parts… you're designing your own chassis… It's a big, big task."
Towriss is feeling confident about this weekend's season-opening race in Australia.
"We had a really good test in Bahrain," Towriss said. Of the other teams' attitude towards Cadillac, Towriss added "it was basically respect for what Cadillac had done that we didn't look like a new team."
Nonetheless, testing times showed that Cadillac is expected to be one of the slowest teams on the F1 grid this season. Towriss didn't shy away from that prediction, admitting it'll likely be a while before the team wins a race.
"We certainly hope before the end of the decade," Towriss said. "We're not here to call our shot. I think we're just here to put our heads down and do our work. And we're going to improve as quickly as we can."
Cadillac is branding itself as "America's team." Struggling at the back of the field is perhaps not the best way to attract American fans, many of whom are new to the sport, which has exploded in popularity in the U.S. in the last few years.
"Americans love a winner," said Megan Schuster, host of the podcast The Ringer F1 Show. "If Cadillac can get a win at some point in the next couple of years, if they bring over an American driver, I think there's a little bit of a grace period in there."
The team's driver lineup this season is Sergio 'Checo' Pérez of Mexico and Valtteri Bottas of Finland.
For "America's team," there are plenty more Europeans doing heavy lifting at Cadillac. The cars were made in the UK. The engines come from Italian F1 giant Ferrari. The team principal, Graeme Lowdon, is British.
Yet Cadillac, Schuster said, will soon become a truly American team. "Cadillac [are] building a really large factory area just outside of Indianapolis," she noted.
That's where Cadillac will eventually build their F1 cars. Parent company GM is also building a factory outside Charlotte, N.C., to make F1 engines.
"That's jobs, that's opportunity, that's innovation and know-how," Towriss said. "This really is an opportunity for us to bring Formula 1 to the U.S. in a way that really hasn't been done before."
That's exciting American F1 fans.
Mikey Leighton, a student in Ann Arbor, Mich., has been a Cadillac motorsport fan even before the team entered F1. He's followed their entries into other categories, like endurance racing.
"I know plenty of people that worked for GM and Cadillac specifically. There's some serious sense of pride around here when you can see these manufacturers going and racing on a world stage and giving it recognition, especially with everything that Detroit has gone through over the last 70 years," Leighton said.
Eric Rodriguez is a new fan. He got into the sport after it launched a race in his hometown, Las Vegas.
"It's an American team, you know, gotta wave the flag," Rodriguez said. "All the right moves they're making, such as bringing in Checo and Bottas, people that you could get behind… that's the team I'm going to put my flag on."
Both Rodriguez and Leighton will be tuning in this season to see if Cadillac's F1 adventure turns out to be as glorious as the moment American astronauts planted their flag on the Moon.
Ashley Westerman edited the radio version of this story. Treye Green edited the digital version.
Copyright 2026 NPR