- General Motors will team up with American racing powerhouse Andretti Global to field a new Formula 1 team, which will be called Andretti Cadillac.
- Andretti Cadillac will submit an official Expression of Interest as F1’s governing body begins the process of considering a new team in the coming months.
- There is still a long way to go before the team becomes official, but F1’s growth in the US and GM’s involvement will certainly help the team’s bid to succeed.
In a surprise announcement, General Motors and Andretti Global have declared their intention to enter the Formula 1 championship. The FIA—Formula 1’s governing body—recently revealed it plans to open the door for new teams to join the grid. Set to be called Andretti Cadillac, the new team will submit an official Expression of Interest as the FIA begins the official process, the first step towards eventually entering the world’s most prestigious form of motorsport.
There’s still a long way to go before this American juggernaut can get its cars on track, and no specific date has been set for when Andretti Cadillac expects to enter its first race. If the application is accepted, the team said it would “compete as soon as practical” and would field at least one American driver.
Andretti—who races in IndyCar and Formula E among other series—previously tried to break into the championship itself but struggled to gain traction. The addition of General Motors—which reclaims the crown of largest US automaker in 2022—is likely to favor the new team, as the Cadillac name should help draw more American attention to the series. The team will be based in the United States, with support facilities in the United Kingdom, similar to the approach taken by the North Carolina-headquartered Haas F1 team.
The popularity of Formula 1 has exploded in the United States since the documentary Drive to Survive debuted on Netflix in 2019, and the 2023 season is set to feature three Grand Prix on American soil. But American F1 fans don’t really have a hometown hero to look up to—neither driver nor team principal for Haas is from the US, and the name isn’t familiar unless you follow NASCAR or work with CNC machine tools. The Cadillac brand promises to bring name recognition to new American fans, and the Andretti name still holds sway among certain demographics that recall Marco Andretti’s F1 and IndyCar successes in the 1970s and ’80s.
Although this is the first time the Cadillac name has appeared in F1, the brand has a long motorsport history and has found success over the past decade in endurance racing. Cadillac’s DPi race car won the IMSA SportsCar championship in 2017, 2018 and 2021, and won top honors at the 24 Hours of Daytona every year from 2017 to 2020. Along with its new ambitions to race in F1 in the near future, Cadillac will compete in the class The new GTP (which replaces the DPi) with the new car debuts at the Daytona 24 Hours later this month.
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This content is imported from polls. You may be able to find similar content in other formats, or you may be able to find more information, on their website.