Graeme Lowdon insists Cadillac’s early months on the Formula 1 grid haven’t just validated the project — they’ve changed the entire dynamic of how the team can build itself. The American-branded squad arrived in 2026 after a fraught, much-scrutinised admission process, and with three grands prix now ticked off, the sell to prospective hires is no longer theoretical.
It’s visible. It’s real. And, crucially in F1, it’s something people can judge with their own eyes.
Lowdon has revealed the scale of interest in joining the operation has been nothing short of staggering: 143,000 applicants, whittled down to more than 9,000 shortlisted candidates, with around 6,500 interviews taking place in the process.
“That whole process is enormous,” Lowdon said, outlining numbers that underline just how magnetic a new works-backed project can be in a paddock where the best talent is usually fought over rather than courted at scale.
What’s notable is the timeline. Cadillac began hiring before it even had formal approval to join the grid, meaning some early recruits effectively signed up on belief — belief that the entry would be confirmed, and belief that the programme would become something they’d actually want to be associated with. Lowdon’s point now is that the gamble is largely gone.
“We went from a position of we didn’t even have an entry when some people were joining, to now people can look at the team,” he explained. “If they are in another team, they can even wander down the pit lane and have a look.”
That last line lands with a bit of paddock truth. F1 is brutally small for an industry that spans the globe: reputations form fast, whispers travel faster, and teams are constantly benchmarking each other — not just on lap time, but on how they operate. A garage that looks calm, a pit wall that looks organised, a crew that seems cohesive: those details matter when you’re trying to pry staff from established outfits.
Lowdon is clearly proud of what the initial group has achieved, describing the existing squad as “quite a small team of people” who’ve done “an incredible job” and deserve recognition. But the bigger message is that Cadillac isn’t talking about topping up here and there; it’s still building out the foundations.
“The team still needs to grow quite a bit,” he said. “So we are looking to not reinforce, because we’ve still got lots of vacancies, so the team is still growing. You can only grow at a certain rate.”
That’s the tightrope every new entrant has to walk. Recruit too slowly and you’re permanently behind the curve. Recruit too quickly and you risk stitching together a collection of CVs rather than a functioning race team — especially under the modern cost cap, where throwing bodies at problems isn’t the get-out clause it once was.
There’s also a geographical twist that’s central to Cadillac’s plan. The team is owned by TWG Group but carries Cadillac branding, and it’s operating across the UK and the US. A brand-new facility has gone up in Silverstone, while the American side is being expanded in parallel.
Lowdon says the next phase of hiring will lean heavily stateside.
“The key focus for recruitment, the bulk of our recruitment from this point onwards is going to be in the US,” he explained. “There’s an awful lot happening on the US side of the operation.”
That line hints at the real challenge Cadillac faces: not simply filling vacancies, but making a split-site organisation feel like one team when the season is moving at full speed. Plenty of established outfits have satellite operations, but building cohesion from scratch — across continents, time zones and working cultures — is a different proposition to adding an outpost once your processes are mature.
And Cadillac is doing all of this in public, with the scrutiny that comes from representing one of the world’s biggest automotive names. F1’s newest projects don’t get to “grow quietly” anymore; they’re judged in real time, on track and off it, by rivals, fans and the wider industry watching to see whether the promise of a major new manufacturer presence translates into a serious racing operation.
Lowdon’s stated ambition is clear enough: make Cadillac “the team that everyone wants to join.” The applicant numbers suggest the curiosity is already there. The harder part — and the part that will define whether this becomes a genuine long-term player — is turning that interest into the right hires, integrated the right way, at the right pace, while the clock is always running.
