Cadillac has limitless ambitions for what it can accomplish, both in its debut season in F1 and in the long term, given the resources at its disposal.
With Cadillac’s entry, the F1 grid will expand to 11 teams in 2026, with the American team becoming the first completely new team in 10 years. Cadillac team principal Graham Loudon said new regulations are making it more difficult to know where teams start, but there are no limits to what they can aim to accomplish.
“It’s impossible to predict anything regarding next year’s championship at this point,” Loudon said. “It’s the same thing up and down[on the grid]. I don’t think anyone will ever know where they will be next year. And if they do, they’re making it up! Because no one knows where they will be.
“We have some clear goals for next year. We have to prepare everything, things like that. But that’s really secondary. How do we execute on them, measuring all the things that we manage? That’s the important thing for next year. How do we operate? And the range of performance that we have defined for next year, how much can we get out of it?”
“I have said before that our ambitions are limitless, and they should be, with the support we have, financially, technically, visionally and in all other aspects.
“We’re going to be in a position to operate within the cost cap. So regardless of where we start next year, we want to move forward and develop in a constructive way. And I know any team will say that, but that’s the reality. We have that bold ambition in mind. We’re preparing with that bold ambition in mind.”
“I know how difficult F1 is. You can’t just show up and beat teams that have been doing F1 for years. These teams are very good at what they do and we have a lot of respect for them.”
“But we employ good people, and if we manage well we will also build a good team. And that will make the competition even more intense. It’s very clear how we are structured and we are not here to just cooperate. We are here to really strive to build a successful F1 team and that is my goal.”
Cadillac F1 and TWG Motorsports CEO Dan Tolis agreed with Loudon’s assessment, saying the team is aligned with Audi’s timeline of being able to compete for a championship by the fifth year of the project.
“I think five years is the right amount of time if you want to be in a position to compete for podiums, wins and a chance at a world championship,” Twaris said.
“Whether it’s a Cadillac engine or a Ferrari engine, from that standpoint, it’s obviously just the development of the car and what the team can do. I think that’s the timeline we want to get there.”
“The most honest answer is we don’t know (where Cadillac will start in 2026). I see a glint in some people’s eyes when we think about how things are coming together and where we are from an aerodynamic standpoint, a weight standpoint, future testing, etc.”
“But other companies’ tools should be more accurate than ours. They’ve been running for a long time and have real data that will be tailored to all their models. But at the same time, we’ve hired a lot of really smart, really experienced F1 staff, so we’ll see what happens.”
“It’s really about what the rate of improvement is going to be when we start to get data on the track and look at it in terms of our ability to bring updates to the track. I think that’s something we’ve been thinking about for a while. A lot of our F1 experience has been with other teams. Now we have a clean slate. We can build this team however we want.
“So the ability to stay up to date on the track, what is our strategy for that? And really, our rate of improvement is the real measure of what this team is capable of.”
“The starting point could be a bolt of lightning in a bottle or a stroke of luck. Even if you end up in last place, hopefully not for too long, what is the rate of improvement after that?”
