Cadillac boss makes the case for F1’s expansion: “This is not a franchise sport”

The F1 grid has comprised 10 F1 teams since 2017, but this would soon change with the arrival of Cadillac next year. While the United States-based squad will become the 11th team on the grid, its team principal, Graeme Lowdon, asserted that the championship was not a franchise sport and should allow more teams to enter the grid to truly justify its world championship status.

F1 is known as the pinnacle of motorsport and has had a relatively stable grid over the past few years, owing to the championship's reluctance to allow new manufacturers onto the grid. This stance was occupied due to the series' previous dwindling hopes of remaining afloat in the 2010s, when it was losing its audience base year-on-year.

However, this was changed with the introduction of Liberty Media, which transformed the sport and soon made it marketable. This even allowed failing ventures like backmarker teams to become profitable, which garnered interest from other manufacturers to join the grid.

This soon led the FIA and the FOM to prepare stringent processes for getting new teams onto the grid. While the current Concorde Agreement allows 12 teams to take part in an F1 world championship season, only 10 teams form the current grid, with Cadillac soon joining the paddock.

Though Cadillac is one of the lucky ones to get the green light from both the FIA and the FOM, many others did not have the same fate. Moreover, this hesitancy of the series to allow more teams onto the grid was condemned by Lowdon, who deemed a true world championship should not have such high walls for manufacturers to climb before entering the sport, as he said (via PlanetF1):

"It’s a World Championship. I often look at the parallel to the Olympics as well. This is not a franchise sport. This is a true World Championship, the best in the world meet and compete. The best teams, the best drivers."

“Formula 1, for me, is the greatest team sport in the world. You’ve got 1,000 players on each side, all in their place. My job is to get the best 1,000 players, and make sure that they’re in right place on the pitch. You can’t call Formula 1 the pinnacle of the sport unless it is a true World Championship."

Meanwhile, Cadillac is in the process of getting its facilities on par with the rest of the teams.

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Cadillac supremo affirms his faith in the team's abilities ahead of its debut in F1

Graeme Lowdon at the Grand Prix Of China - Source: Getty

Cadillac will be the second US-based manufacturer in F1 after Haas. However, Haas performs the majority of its work in the UK and Italy, the Michigan-based manufacturer will not follow in Haas' footsteps.

Moreover, Graeme Lowdon is assertive that the team would not be a catastrophic failure like USF1, as he said (via The Race):

"Absolutely. This is not blasé or underestimating the task, I'm just confident with the people that we've got on board, I've worked with a lot of them in the past."

Cadillac's entry into the racing sphere in 2026 will be the first time since 2016 that 11 teams will form the racing grid.