Cadillac to be 11th team for 2026

Formula 1 and General Motors have confirmed they have agreed in principle to a Cadillac F1 team on the grid for 2026.

The decision came after Formula 1 management and teams rejected a bid from Andretti earlier this year from the same project. General Motors are the parent company of Cadillac.

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Despite the rejection, the team continued to recruit staff and make lobbying attempts.

Michael Andretti eventually stepped down as CEO of the project and left the Andretti Global team to Dan Tworiss.

It is reported that several teams were unhappy with Andretti’s approach.

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Perhaps a much more key component is that General Motors will now take over the team. It had already announced its Cadillac would come to the sport by 2028 as an engine supplier.

Teams seemed much more willing to allow a GM bid onto the grid. The team looks set to be called ‘Cadillac,’ but it won’t be powered by a Cadillac engine initially, which won’t be ready for 2026.

The Andretti bid had initially agreed to an in-principle deal with Renault before they announced their engine manufacturer would leave the sport in 2026.

GM has announced that Cadillac will be using a Ferrari engine for their first two years before becoming a works team by 2028. This will fill in the gap of a Ferrari customer team being left by Sauber, who will switch to Audi.

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The even bigger threat to F1 was that GM may have pulled the plug on their Cadillac engine project, which Andretti was hoping to use.

With no 11th team, there would have been no one to use the Cadillac engine. As Renault had recently withdrawn their engine program, F1 was in danger of losing another engine supplier.

There have been no announcements yet on who their drivers will be. F1 will be up to 11 teams for the first time since 2016, after Manor withdrew.

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