The GM Chevrolet Corvette has been an iconic coupe since 1953, making it a youthful 73 years old as I type.
It's always looked fantastic, and has occasionally managed to stop and handle like a sports car. It has always exploded in a straight line like an Exocet-enhanced church mouse. Over all those years I cannot think of a single shape which does not have handfuls of character, and graceful lines. Some are more iconic than others, and the current edition is an absolute weapon, if not quite true to the Corvette spirit as it is mid/rear engined. The current base model pumps out a modest 495 hp, while the range-topping hybrid electrically enhanced ZR1X has an eye-watering 1,250 hp, being nearly 1000 kW! Technical name? Beast.
So, given GM pulled its Cadillac LM cars back in 2003 to promote the then track version of the Corvette, why are they now re-entering Le Mans, and a few other classes, with Cadillac branded cars and not Corvette? Why not Corvette for F1? The Corvette only comes as a two-seat coupe, with the only option being how large would Sir like his engine? Cadillac meanwhile has a solid range of SUVs, including the continent crushing Escalade, and some high-speed sedan options, depending on engine, in the CT4 and CT5. They then have a modest selection of electric vehicles, all with silly names ending in 'Q' so not sure who they are aimed at to be honest. Lyriq, Vistiq and so on.
Cadillac sold around 350,000 cars globally in 2025, while Corvette sold just short of 26,000, with 24,533 of those being in the US. Meaning only 1,467 Corvettes sold outside the US! In short, it is clear why GM would elect to promote Cadillac on the world stage rather than the Corvette, no matter how much more beautiful even the ugliest Corvette is compared to the most 'beautiful' Escalade.
Dan Towriss, Cadillac F1 CEO, recently stated they are "on track" as an F1 team. That's great. He must be somewhat clear-eyed as he also noted "...a lot of great feelings about getting to track and exceeding expectations, but that all evaporated once the lights went out in Melbourne". So, it is easy to generate the marketing hype and the pre-season love story, then reality bites like a hungry Great White and a world of pain explodes. Dan was self-aware enough to notice.
Since re-entering racing in 2023 with the V-Series R Cadillac Le Mans car, GM have gathered seven wins from 26 race starts as of this writing. So someone in the company knows how to win. Their entry is built by Dallara so I'm not sure how much in-house effort goes into each car. It is of note that the Haas F1 car is also built by Dallara, and has a Ferrari engine in the back, the same as the Cadillac.
Mr. Towriss has a highly successful background in insurance and financial services. He is also a keen lover of Motorsport. Does this make him a man to lead a team to victory in F1? Or is he there to lead the team to massive profits via F1? Your author expects it is the second option that Dan is being asked to focus on.
Liberty Media have made the Golden Goose model of F1 highly successful right now. Those eggs are only going to keep dropping if a few specifics are realised. The fan base must at worst remain stable, and at best continue strong growth. Enough of the sport, drama, and heroics of "classic" F1 needs to remain so the sport avoids becoming the WWE of Motorsport. Large companies, and car obsessed billionaires, must continue to see value in owning and running F1 teams. If the only strategy they all have is "build a good cash flow and flog the team ASAP" then F1 is already in a death spiral. The muttering of Haas' exit strategy being to sell to Toyota in the medium term is not without grounds.
Dan has gathered a solid team around him. By solid I mean 'capable of running a professional racing organisation on a budget'. Is that the same as "been a key member of a multiple-championship winning team over many seasons, and I can win again"? I think we can agree that's a "No". So are they "On target?" Honestly, it's hard to say without actually seeing what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are written down for the team by GM. Are those KPIs weighted towards "lay lots of golden eggs and don't spend too much", or are they weighted towards, "sell your soul to give us a championship within five years"? How they are weighted, and worded, would tell us much about the real drive behind the GM F1 adventure.
Being dead last, and usually lapped by the end, assuming the Cadillacs are still running, after four rounds tends to suggest a very modest set of goals for the first half of the season. "Don't break anything, don't drive into each other, give us lots of high-def cool images and plenty of sound-bites, find a way to get Bottas talking about the Escalade." You'll notice they have made Bottas go way more corporate than some of his totally genius releases of previous years.
Leclerc and Hamilton currently sit 3rd and 4th in the championship on 59, and 51 points. Only the Mercedes duo of Kimi (100 points) and George (80 points) are ahead, prior to the Canadian GP weekend. So it is reasonable to assume the Ferrari engine package is a good one. Bottas and Perez are seasoned capable drivers. Bottas has won 10 grands prix and finished second in the Drivers' Championship in both 2019 and 2020. Perez has won a slightly more modest six races, and also finished second in the championship in 2023. So we know the engine and the drivers are all good enough for the job. Which leaves us with team capability, strategy, and the chassis as the unknown variables.
Let's do this in reverse order. The chassis is clearly slow this year. If it were not, either of their two fine drivers would have that Cadillac not too far off the rear of the Ferraris. They are not even close. So chassis improvement is critical.
Strategy. Well... when you are running around dead last with only one another for company it is impossible to see if any genius-level strategy is being played out. The difference between "We finished only a lap and 25 seconds down" and "We finished only a lap and fifteen seconds down" is impossible to judge as a great strategy call. So this is a "pending" in our current understanding of the team's progress.
Which brings us to team capability. The Cadillac F1 team uses four sites spread across the globe. Fishers, Indiana USA. HQ, and main manufacturing facility. Concord, North Carolina USA. This is the future engine manufacturing site, currently a work in progress. Warren, Michigan, USA. Engineering and technical operations, co-located with the existing GM Technical centre. Silverstone, Northamptonshire, UK. European HQ and a development and production centre. Then for added spice we have a fifth location being the old Toyota wind tunnel in the epicentre of F1 innovation, Cologne, Germany for aerodynamic testing and development.
Dear, wisdom-infused, reader, can you from your worldly experiences see any issues at all with multiple sites having "HQ" next to their name, spreading your workforce across three countries and multiple time zones, and having the complex beast that is a modern F1 car created across five independent sites? Oh, wait! Plus the engine and gearbox come from Ferrari so it is really six sites in four countries in multiple time zones! With English, American (it is not English...), German and Italian primary languages thrown in for good measure. Oh! Oh! And mixing UK imperial, American imperial, and Metric units into the mix... What could possibly go wrong with such a genius spread of diversity!?
To think Mercedes, Ferrari, and McLaren all crap on about the need to ideally have a single site for operations (two at a push) to fully integrate and create the magic! What a bunch of one-site losers we have there! Oh, hang on! They've all won multiple titles across decades. Umm. Could there be something to all one's facilities being within shouting distance of one another?
Well Dan and the gang (wait dear reader for when I pull out the "Desperate Dan" label towards the end of this season, or the commencement of next...) appear to think all those one-site ninnies have missed the trick of using six sites across four countries to release the Kraken and storm the championship in a couple of years. Or, just possibly, to generate enough interest and revenue to flog the team at a glorious profit by 2030.
Time for me to lean back, put Prince's "Little Red Corvette" on the streaming service, and picture climbing into a 1967 C2 Corvette and hammering down a deserted coastal road. That big block 427 cubic inch V8 screaming glory to God under that sweet "stinger" hood line. No Tic Tok moment required. Just a V8, a little red Corvette, and a little imagination. Good luck Cadillac. I'm taking the Corvette over the Escalade every time.
Max Noble
Learn more about Max and check out his previous features, here
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