Graeme Lowdon: getting Cadillac on-track in F1

0:00This episode is sponsored by Honda. Since its first Formula One victory in the 1965 Mexico Grand Prix, Honda has always taken what's learned on the track and used it to build better cars for everyone. From pushing limits in F1 to engineering the next generation of hybrids like the Prelude Hybrid and Civic Sedan Hybrid, Honda proves that racing doesn't just inspire innovation, it drives it. And that idea of taking lessons from the racetrack and applying them to road cars has always been a part of Honda's DNA. Decades of engineering in the demanding world of Formula One have helped shape the performance and efficiency you see in Honda's road cars today.

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2:51Why did one of the biggest car brands in the world choose Graham Loudon to launch its brand new Formula One team? Because he knows how to do it. If you're going to do this, you just have to start the team now without the entry, because if you wait for the entry, there won't be enough time to build a team. That decision without an entry is going to cost hundreds of millions at risk. You can't half start building an F1 team, you've just got to do it. After years of work, Cadillac's place on the grid was confirmed at the start of this year. Now the countdown is on. F1's newest team aren't racing yet but they're already moving fast we've got 60 70 engineers running this entire race weekend exactly as it would be as if we were competing except our car is in the simulator in charlotte we have massive respect for the teams that we're going to race against they're hugely skilled hugely competitive and partly the way of us showing our respect is the amount of effort we're trying to put in to make sure that you know we want to compete with them

4:01Welcome everyone, I'm Tom Clarkson and this is F1 Beyond the Grid. Back in 2010, Graham Loudon launched Virgin Racing, a team with a small budget, which raced at the back of the grid and was graced by the huge talent of the late Jules Bianchi. Cadillac is a different proposition. Backed by General Motors, they have more resources and they value experience. That's why they chose Graham to run the team and proven race winners Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas to drive their cars. Their test driver, IndyCar star Colton Hurta, is betting that experience in Formula 2 will lead to a chance in Formula 1, but nothing in this sport is guaranteed.

4:46Graham talks about all of that, plus the three years of work that has led the team to this point and the detailed preparations going on behind the scenes on both sides of the Atlantic right now to make sure Formula One's newest team are ready.

5:05Graham, it is lovely to have you on the show. It's very nice to be here. How is the busiest man in Formula One right now? Busy. To not put too fine a point on it. Yeah, it's, you know, it's busy. There's a lot of challenges. Bringing a new team in, there's bound to be a lot of challenges, but, and, you know, a lot of problems, but it's all a better class of problem than, you know, the period where we weren't, you know, we weren't sure whether we'd get an entry or not. So although it's busy, it's good busy, if you know what I mean. We're six months out. I don't want to... Yeah, thanks for that.

5:39We're six months from the first race in Melbourne. Is everything on schedule? How is progress? It is on schedule. and you know I know I smiled a bit when he said six months but we have a you know right from when we got the entry confirmation back in March on the walls of all of the offices that we have we have countdown clocks counting down to two things one is fire up of the car for the first time and the second is uh is the first race in in Melbourne so I'm acutely aware of how many days hours minutes and seconds are uh are available to us because that's you know that's the challenge now putting together you know a fully professional Formula One team that we can all be proud of and and our fans can be proud of as well in a very very very short space of time.

6:24Newer listeners may not be aware that you've been around in Formula One a long time. Yeah. How different is this project to the one that you were setting up in 2010 when you started Virgin Racing? Very different. The 2009 entry process was significantly quicker in terms of the actual entry process itself. But then what happened subsequent to that was a period of intense instability in terms of regulations. And so fans who recall back to that period, you know, there was going to be two different sets of technical regulations, and then there's going to be a cost cap, and then there's going to be a cost cap at 30 million or 40 million, you know, figures that you just couldn't even sort of comprehend now in terms of limitations.

7:15And then there was no cost cap and then there was a resource restriction agreement and then there was CURS and then there was options to have that or not. Every single week it was as if the goalposts changed and it was enormously difficult to try and navigate. This time the entry process has been significantly longer and it was incredibly thorough. And, you know, I'm very proud of everyone involved in achieving that entry because Formula One is difficult. It is the pinnacle of world motorsport. And so it should be difficult to get into. And it was. But now that we're in, there's a lot more stability in terms of, you know, regulations and the overall platform.

7:55And so to some extent, it's a different challenge this time. But also Formula One's moved on a lot. And I think, you know, in the last 10 or 15 years, we've seen this this big shift from what used to be primarily sporting events like a race you know you go to a race now we go to an occasion it really is an occasion now you know so any fans who haven't been to a grand prix live i thoroughly encourage it because it's an experience now there's more than just the on-track action and all of and and don't get me wrong the on-track action is still fantastic you know i'm a f1 fan at heart and so i love watching these cars and I just think you know I have a real appreciation for it the sport's grown so much now you know with the commercial rights holder and the regulator and the promoters and the teams working together to to achieve that and so just these events are so special now you know when when Formula One's in town everyone knows about it it has changed significantly in that time.

8:57Can you give us a chronology now of getting the Cadillac F1 project off the ground when When were you first approached about it? Well, it feels like about three and a half thousand years ago. This project's definitely aged me. But it was probably about three, three and a half years ago. I was driving up the A1 and I had a phone call. It was from somebody whose opinion I respect a lot. And they said, you know, would you take a call from the people at Andretti? They'd been looking to buy a team, Saovo, and that hadn't worked out. And so they were looking to bring a new team in. and the person who called me said, look, I've recommended that you talk to them because you've done it before and there are very, very few people who've done it and it's not a straightforward process and there are certain things that I think contribute to an applicant being successful and so I said, yeah, sure, take the call and then I had this really, it was a really cool call because there were a whole bunch of people on from the Andretti side, including Mario.

10:01I think I'd maybe met him a couple of times before but not, you know certainly never had a conversation with him and you know when you're talking to a world champion, they have a kind of way of talking and expressing things and just the enthusiasm in his voice about this project and so I explained how I thought they should go about it or whatever and at the end of the call I still remember it now he just said, right, well that's great Graham just one more thing, you know, just don't let me down and I'm thinking well this is you know Mario Andretti 1978 world champion there's a guy who raced everything and did it when it was not just difficult but very dangerous as well and you know thankfully due to FIA and and the commitment from the teams and the commercial rights holder sport is significantly safer now but when you have somebody like that saying you know I really want to do this don't let me down you listen and so I was motivated from that point and got on board then.

11:00And that was 2022. How quickly did you build up ahead of Steam from that moment? Well, I guess I gave two pieces of advice about bringing a new team in. One was there is an established entry process and you have to take it incredibly seriously. So if you get asked 10 questions, you give 20 answers. If they want one piece of information, you give 100 pieces of information. And so the first piece of advice was, When we submit the entry dossier, it was hundreds and hundreds of pages. We went right down. We detailed what was in every seafreight container that we're going to send, what day that seafreight container would go on a ship, every detail to demonstrate that you know what you're doing because they want people to join Formula One who, A, take it seriously, and B, know what they're doing.

11:50So that was one piece of advice. But the other piece was if you're going to do this, you just have to start the team now without the entry because if you wait for the entry, there won't be enough time to build a team. But secondly, if you are building a team, it shows commitment and it gives people confidence that you are the right people to give an entry to. That decision without an entry is going to cost hundreds of millions at risk. You can't half start building an F1 team. You've just got to do it. And the backers were great. They said, okay, let's do it. And that's when they said, we hired you to advise how we should do the entry, but now we'd like you to start building the team for us.

12:32And so that's what we did. So how much had you spent prior to getting the entry? I don't know, but it was a lot. I mean, tens of millions. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we'll be in hundreds. So you're being serious when you said hundreds of millions. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And was there a plan B if you hadn't got an entry? No, it's plan A. I was totally and utterly convinced that this entry would happen. The thing I was unsure of was how long it was going to take. In all honesty, that got tested along the way because it took a long time. I just kept looking at what are the fundamentals. We're trying to do a good thing here.

13:11We're bringing a racing team into the pinnacle of world motorsport and there are available slots on the grid. There's no downside to this. You have to be able to show you can do it. We're bringing more drivers, more action, more cars. The biggest asset Formula One has is the fan base. And we knew because we were asking fans, would you like to see this happen? And overwhelmingly, the answer was yes. And that is the added value that the other teams were quizzing, weren't they? When it was being discussed to the other teams, would they welcome an 11th team? What's the added value? right there you've just said it yeah it's it you know it's you know we're giving the fans what what they want and you know they're the most important thing that formula one has if we don't have them all of this falls away all of it so i was you know i was a believer um of of the project and you know yes it got tested along the way because of just how long it took but there was no plan b in my mind because i couldn't see a scenario where this where this wouldn't happen and it was all good as far as I was concerned.

14:19This episode is sponsored by Honda. Since its first Formula One victory in the 1965 Mexico Grand Prix, Honda has always taken what's learned on the track and used it to build better cars for everyone. From pushing limits in F1 to engineering the next generation of hybrids like the Prelude Hybrid and Civic Sedan Hybrid, Honda proves that racing doesn't just inspire innovation, It drives it. And that idea of taking lessons from the racetrack and applying them to road cars has always been a part of Honda's DNA. Decades of engineering in the demanding world of Formula One have helped shape the performance and efficiency you see in Honda's road cars today.

15:04And now that same thinking is shaping the next generation of hybrids as well. Cars like the 2026 Prelude Hybrid and Civic Hybrid show that electrification can be both efficient and genuinely fun to drive. The 2026 Prelude Hybrid and Civic Sedan Hybrid are engineered for fun. From the racetrack to your driveway. Learn more about the Prelude and Civic and the latest innovations at Honda.com. This episode is sponsored by Honda. Since its first Formula One victory in the 1965 Mexico Grand Prix, Honda has always taken what's learned on the track and used it to build better cars for everyone. From pushing limits in F1 to engineering the next generation of hybrids like the Prelude Hybrid and Civic Sedan Hybrid, Honda proves that racing doesn't just inspire innovation, it drives it.

16:00And that idea of taking lessons from the racetrack and applying them to road cars has always been a part of Honda's DNA. Decades of engineering in the demanding world of Formula One have helped shape the performance and efficiency you see in Honda's road cars today. And now that same thinking is shaping the next generation of hybrids as well. Cars like the 2026 Prelude Hybrid and Civic Hybrid show that electrification can be both efficient and genuinely fun to drive. The 2026 Prelude Hybrid and Civic Sedan Hybrid are engineered for fun. From the racetrack to your driveway. Learn more about the Prelude and Civic and the latest innovations at Honda.com.

16:49Still to come, Graham talks about drivers Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez and Colton Herter, and he shares his memories of the late Jules Bianchi. Elsewhere on F1's official podcast this week, you can listen to F1 Nation's preview of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with me and Jolien Parma, And F1 Explains has former strategist Bernie Collins answering your questions. Press play on an episode of F1 Nation or F1 Explains right after you finish listening to Graham.

17:20Now, General Motors have a great history in American motorsport. NASCAR, IndyCar, drag racing. Why was Formula One so irresistible to them? You know, the reality is it's a question for them. but if you want my kind of observation on it, it's maybe two things. One is, one thing I really love about everyone at GM is that they think like racers. They go into these sporting endeavors with real appreciation and a real respect. So they're coming into Formula One with respect. For me, that's born out of people who've been, you know, they've been racing. And, you know, I like sports car. I like all racing in reality, but I like sports car.

18:03I love Le Mans. and I was trying to think back to when there wasn't a GM product at Le Mans and they've been there with Corvette for a long, long time. And so all of the conversations that we had with GM, I got what they were talking about because they understand racing and they know it. They don't just dabble in it to sell a few cars or anything like that. They see the bigger picture of it. And as well, Formula One, it is a fantastic showcase for innovation and the Cadillac history in particular if we're looking at that brand within GM, Cadillac's got this 120-year history of real innovation, some really innovative kind of things.

18:44So there was a real fit with that. And then not to be forgotten as well is the fit between the values. In our team, we have mission, vision, values and we operate to our values and there's a very, very close fit to how we wanted to go racing. And, you know, I'd like to think that it was a combination of a kind of cultural fit, but also, you know, really appealed to their understanding and respect for racing. That's GM. You've got two big backers, TWG being the other and Dan Taurus. Yeah. What do they bring to the party? They are just super, super interesting group. They understand sport very, very well.

19:26When I say sport, I mean in a really wide context. So their investments span basketball, baseball, Premier League, soccer. Are they Chelsea FC? Yeah, so there's Chelsea, they own the LA Dodgers, the majority owner of the Lakers. These are big sporting franchises and big household names as well. The vision that they have, largely fed, I think, from the learning that they have in these other sports, the vision that they have for the Formula One team is just incredible. It's really cool. We've often talked about ambitions for the Formula One team and one of the things that we've said is that our ambition is limitless and that's driven a lot by the TWG approach.

20:12They've demonstrated in these other sports that if you have the right approach and the right vision, they're incredibly well resourced so they're able to invest in the facilities that a top class Formula One team needs. But I think more importantly is to bring that vision of just where can we be as a team. And some of the stuff that we have planned, which I'm not sure I can talk about yet, I think is fantastic. And it'll be great for the fans. It involves a lot of investment. But, you know, it's just exciting to be part of. You mentioned facilities. The race team is based at Silverstone. Is that right?

20:47Well, our global headquarters is in Fishers. It's on the outskirts of Indianapolis. and that is a nearly half million square foot development, brand new build, which... For Formula One. For Formula One, just for Formula One, only for Formula One. And it's going to have a whole bunch of things surrounding it as well, which I've alluded to just before, which I think will be very interesting for the fans. That's headquarters and the bulk of the car will be manufactured there over time. But again, you can't build a factory, you know, we've got an entry in March of this year, You can't build a factory, hire all the people, put all the machines in, and then manufacture components to Formula One standard, which is like aerospace standard, and be on the grid in Melbourne with that car.

21:34It just won't work. So we have a facility at Silverstone, which is a logistics facility. It's also where we have the aero design and mechanical design. the 26 car will be coordinated from there while Fishers is being completed but over time the main HQ will be in the US. Silverson is not just an offshoot it's a significant part of the of the team we have a wind tunnel in Cologne and then so next year's car is being the aero is being done at the what is it it's the Toyota facility in Cologne is the wind tunnel that we use so we have exclusive use of that we've invested a lot of money in it in the facility there to give additional functionality and the aero team working on that are in Silverstone we make a lot of the wind tunnel model parts in Silverstone you know look the other day we'd we'd put 32 and a half thousand parts on that model and that figures already out of date so you can imagine there's a lot needs doing on on that side of things and then we're building a new power unit facility in Charlotte.

22:47Back in America, in North Carolina. In North Carolina. And we also have a resource in the GM Technical Center in Charlotte as well. So it sounds complicated, but trust me, it isn't. We organize the structure of the team specifically to kind of eradicate all of this cross-border thing. There's no silos. There's no sort of thinking of one place here or one place there. the whole team operates as a single entity and we did a lot of research into how the how nasa had structured the apollo missions and we learned a lot there about managing big groups technically orientated where peer-to-peer communication you know engineer to engineer aero specialist to aero specialist all that where that communication is maximized across different geographical boundaries and so we've we designed the structure of the team along those lines so it operates as all one team it just happens some teams have um rooms and corridors you know our corridors are just very very long and uh stretch across the atlantic but the team operates as a single entity i've always wondered why teams don't have bases in europe and the us i mean it has to as well but because because your day is that much longer if it's working properly isn't with the time different.

24:07It's true. And, you know, we're running a simulation. I'm sat here talking to you in Monza during the Monza Grand Prix. So we're simulating this entire race weekend as we speak. So what do you mean by that? So we have an ops room in Silverstone. We have an ops room. Like a mission control room. Mission control. Yeah, yeah. So we've got 60, 70 engineers running this entire race weekend exactly as it would be as if we were competing, except our car isn't on the tarmac here in Monza. It's in the simulator in Charlotte. But every single session, we even simulate the media sessions here so that the drivers are not available for that period of time.

24:46Basically, we want to be in a position that when we hit the tarmac in Melbourne, we don't have people introducing each other to each other and saying, oh, hello, nice to be in a new team. Everything's got to be up to speed. So we have this program called Race Ready and it involves all sorts of simulations and we have massive respect for the teams that we're going to race against. They're hugely skilled, hugely competitive and partly the way of us showing our respect is the amount of effort we're trying to put in to make sure that we want to compete with them and so that's part of what we're doing.

25:20Who's driving the simulator in Charlotte this weekend? Is it Valtteri or Checo or someone else? It's not. So the race drivers, we're doing more simulated races for the balance of this season, and the race drivers will be in, but it was too short notice, the driver announcements and everything, to coordinate everything. So we have a roster of sim drivers, and I won't say who's in, because we haven't announced all our sim drivers yet. So I know exactly who's in, but I can't say. Look, we'll come on to drivers. There's just a couple more things about the car and the factory I wanted to ask you about.

25:55It's going to be a Ferrari power unit next year, isn't it? Just how much are you getting from Ferrari? Is it just the PU or is it the rear end, the gearbox, the suspension as well? So unlike other customer teams that they work with, we're taking just the PU and the gearbox internals. So we're building the gearbox casing and everything. We're doing all the suspension, everything. We just take the power unit and the cassette, the internals of the gearbox. It's a very bold way of doing it. but we're building a manufacturer team here. So the last team that came in through an FIA process was Haas and the regulations were very different then.

26:36You could almost take an entire car from someone else. That's changed a lot now. You can take a lot less, but we could still, in theory, take suspension and everything. But at some stage, we've got to design this stuff to fulfill our ambitions. So, you know, we're taking that step from the start. So you're designing, who is manufacturing? While you're building everything up in Fishers and at Silverstone, are you getting help from a Dallara type manufacturer? It's just, you know, a network of suppliers who supply all the other teams, actually. You know, teams do manufacture certain things in-house and we're gearing up to do the same at Fishers.

27:16But there's a network, you know, across the world of people who manufacture. who manufacture, but, you know, pretty much every team on the grid, I guess, gets their radiators from the same company in, you know, who have a manufacturing plant in Australia and Indianapolis. You know, so we're working with partners in the supply chain as the other teams do, but we're just doing less of it ourselves to begin with because we haven't built that part up. You know, you have to design the car yourself from day one because you have to own the IP. That's what Formula One is. that's how the formula works but manufacturing can be you know that can be something that you build up to so we focused on building the design capability first and then the manufacturing capability will follow what is the global head count now of the cadillac f1 team it's a good question and i'm not avoiding the answer it's just changes every day so we're talking here now just after the 2025 shutdown i think in the two weeks after shutdown i think we we have over 100 and over 120 joining in the next 10 or 15 days that's the speed of onboarding how do you get them working as a team well the first reason i asked that zach brown is very quick to tell you that 98 of the people that finished ninth in the constructors championship seven years ago are still at mclaren yeah and it's about empowering the workforce and getting them to work together that has created the force that they are today so when you when you have so many people joining how how do you go about making them work as a team um it's a good question and you're you're quite right it's you know it's all it's all about treating people properly as well you know so everyone who joins our team gets welcomed you know we have a meeting every wednesday we physically welcome them so the team read their name out tell them what they're doing and we say, you know, welcome aboard.

29:13So we start how we want to continue. Teams are all about people. And when we're looking at how you manage a big group of people and how you bring them together quickly, the management approach that we've taken, if we think of racing teams are often described in kind of military terms. You know, people say it's like a military operation and this, that, and the other. And there are a few different ways that military go about organizing things. and one is command and control. You have a central organization that tells everyone what to do. That won't work in our situation. I don't think it works anyway, but that won't work in our situation.

29:51The alternative is what we call mission control, where everybody knows what the mission is, and you just hire the best people you can hire. You make them feel welcome. We want these people on our team. They're wanted by us. And you give them the freedom to do their job. I can't... Actually, I have got an engineering degree, but I can't go and do some Bernoulli's equation and work out some aero thing or whatever. We get the best people we can and we give them the resource and we let them know very clearly what the mission is and we make them feel part of the team. It's very easy when there's a small number of you and this team has grown from a sheet of paper, literally a blank sheet of paper.

30:34And so, you know, day one we have one person, two people, three, and it grows and grows and grows. It's very easy to have the tight team spirit when there's a handful of you. The challenge is maintaining that. But I think the approach that we have where we make people welcome, we have very clear values, very clear values set within the business, and we hire people based on those values as well to get the right mix of people. And then we tell them what the objective is. And these are clever people, really, really clever people. So we don't need to tell them what to do. We just need to say, this is where we're going.

31:09And that's my view on how you build a team. What are your values? How do you want to go racing? So we drill it down to four key values. We have bold ambition. We've said it before. And that doesn't mean being blasé or anything else like that. But there's nothing wrong with having bold ambition. It's a reflection from GM. They're very bold at the way they go about things. so that's really key. There's excellence in execution, just doing things right. We really focus on that. There's a focus on innovation so we welcome new ideas. You champion them. Building Formula One racing cars is a hugely creative business.