Cadillac speaking to “6 to 10 good candidates” ahead of 2026 debut
- Rhonan Colquhoun
- Jul 2
- 2 min read
01/07/25 Rhonan Colquhoun 23:47pm
F1’s newest team is currently holding talks with drivers ahead of their arrival onto the grid next season with Team Principal Graeme Lowdon suggesting there’s a fairly large pool of potential drivers.
Lowdon, former Team Principal of Marussia between 2012 to 2015, is spearheading the American outfit’s entry and appeared on The High Performance Podcast hosted by former BBC F1 Presenter Jake Humphrey.
Over the course of the interview, Humphrey suggested a couple of potential candidates with the likes of McLaren’s Lando Norris and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen being thrown into conversation.
Lowdon said: “It’s my job to explore every single avenue. No matter what it is. If it’s a driver who can extract everything. Every single thing. Their job is incredibly specific and that is to extract the maximum from that car.”
One driver that Lowdon did seem to rule out as a potential candidate was former Red Bull and McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo who left the sport last season.
Lowdon seemed to squash any chances of Ricciardo returning to the grid when questioned by Humphreys when the presenter asked if Lowdon wanted to “convince” the Australian to come back.
He said: “I think he’s publicly said that he’s not interested in Formula One. It’s not my job - if I need to convince someone, then it’s the wrong person.”
One candidate who has been linked with the new project is 10-time Grand Prix Winner Valtteri Bottas who is currently the Test and Reserve driver for Mercedes. The former Sauber driver has hinted that he was in talks with the outfit by posting an obvious Instagram reel which involved a Cadillac road car.
Lowdon openly admitted that the outfit where in talks with the Finnish driver and also mentioned former F2 driver Felipe Drugovich.
Drugovich, who recently competed for Cadillac in the IMSA Sportscar Championship in early January, has been unable to find a seat on the grid since winning the F2 Championship in 2022 and currently holds the role of Test and Reserve Driver for Aston Martin.
He said: Yeah, there’s probably, you know, I would say 6 to 10, good candidates.”
Another couple of candidates who have been rumoured to be interested is Sergio Perez who is vying to return to the grid and Yuki Tsunoda who still can’t seem to get to grips with the characteristics of his Red Bull.
Lowdon was open to admit that finding the right candidates for the team was not as high a priority at the moment as other key factors were more important. He said: “Although the phone has been busy, the answer to everybody has been pretty much the same. Which is we got to build some cars but before we build the cars, we need to design. The we need to manufacture the bits, and before we do that, we’ve got to hire the people and before that, we’ve got to have buildings to put the people in it.”
Comments