As Cadillac races to first F1 season, insiders advise patience for U.S. fans

Cadillac has become the first American auto giant to step into the fiercely competitive world of Formula One with a dedicated team. The storied U.S. brand unveiled the official team livery for its inaugural 2026 season during the Super Bowl Sunday night.

The Super Bowl ad, which aired during the fourth quarter, shows the black and white livery. It features part of President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 “We choose to go to the Moon” speech in which he said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

“That challenge is one that we are willing to accept … and one which we intend to win,” the edited speech said in the ad. The short feature closed out with the phrase: “THE MISSION BEGINS.”

Leading Cadillac’s effort is team principal Graeme Lowdon, who’s built the team from the ground up, including new facilities in Indiana, the home of Indycar; North Carolina, the home of NASCAR; and Silverstone, England, the home of F1.

Speaking with CBS before the livery reveal, Lowdon called the road to get Cadillac into the F1 game “lengthy, with lots of twists and turns.”

He recently shared that Cadillac had hired more than 500 people to join the new team, from a pool of some 143,000 applicants.

“There’s a lot of expectation, and quite rightly so,” Lowdon told CBS News. “General Motors is a hugely respected and impressive entity … so there is that pressure, but that’s what Formula One’s about.”

On the track, the American brand will be represented by former Mercedes team driver Valtteri Bottas, originally from Finland, and Mexican former Red Bull driver Sergio Perez. Widely considered to be veterans in the sport, they have a total of 16 Grand Prix victories and more than 500 race starts between them.

Having that level of experience behind the wheel, for an otherwise new team, was the chief motivator behind signing those two drivers, according to Lowdon.

“These guys know how to win,” he said. “But above all else, they have an ability to gel a team together, so they’re the focal point for the engineering activities, the garage activities, everything to do with operating a team at the highest level.”

A slow start in a fast sport? 

Experts say American fans hoping Cadillac will deliver a blockbuster first season as it steps into the ring against longtime heavyweights such as Ferrari and Mercedes may be disappointed. 

The odds of Cadillac winning an F1 race, or even finishing on the podium this season, aren’t generally considered very strong. 

A winning Formula One car, and a winning team behind it, can take at least several seasons to develop, and require consistent investment.

Ross Brawn, the man widely credited as the architect behind German F1 sensation Michael Schumacher‘s success, told CBS News at the 2026 Autosport Awards in London that American fans may need some patience.

“It’s very tough,” Brawn said about the expectations for the Cadillac team this season. “They’ve got some very good people there. They have been sensible in choosing a lot of experienced people, but it’s going to be very tough, so give them a bit of time.”

David Croft, a prominent Formula One commentator for Britain’s Sky Sports network, urged fans this year to look for development, not podium placement.

“Wherever they start the hope for me is that that’s not where they’ll finish,” he told CBS News at the 2026 Autosport Awards. “They’ve got the drive and the determination, and they’ve got the right people in place to be a success eventually in Formula One, but it’s going to take a bit of time.”

Formula One’s growing popularity in the U.S.

According to ESPN, which has long held Formula One broadcasting rights in the U.S., 2025 was the biggest season to date for average viewership for the sport, with 16 of the 24 races setting viewership records. The broadcaster has said that over the past eight years, average viewership per Grand Prix more than doubled, from 554,000 to 1.3 million in the U.S.

Formula One is still dwarfed in the U.S. as a racing spectator sport, with overall viewership for the Nascar Cup Series, for instance, averaging 3.2 million in 2025. 

But insiders say the trajectory is undeniable, and encouraging.

“There was a time we’d go to Austin, the U.S. Grand Prix, and nobody would know what Formula One is when we got to passport control, let alone who we were,” Croft told CBS. “Now people know who we are and what Formula One is, what it stands for.” 

Many pundits see the success of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” series behind F1’s rising popularity in the U.S.

Croft also credited the addition of two more races in the United States, in Miami and Las Vegas. Alongside races in Texas, Mexico, Canada and Brazil, a total of six F1 races now take place within American time zones, making it easier for fans to tune into the action live, he noted.

Lowdon hopes Cadillac can ride the wave of popularity, and that fans will enjoy following the new team’s journey – even if it means settling for relatively small “wins” at first.

“It’s really so difficult to achieve success that, if you come along and join the journey … then [fans] can enjoy, if you like, the minor victories along the way,” he said. “Even just producing a car as complex as this is a minor victory in itself.”