F1 newbies Cadillac have no illusions of task ahead, but ‘everyone’s up for the challenge’
Team principal Graeme Lowdon says objective is not just to establish a team, but to be competitive quickly and to ‘go forward’
When Cadillac’s cars line up for the start of the Australian Grand Prix, Graeme Lowdon will finally allow himself a moment to reflect on how far the Formula One team have come.
Melbourne in March will mark the end of a three-year journey just to get on the grid, and the start of the American outfit’s bid to impose themselves on the sport as the 11th team in the paddock.
With the first private testing taking place in Barcelona at the end of January, and everything “absolutely flat out” in the weeks and months before and after, the 60-year-old does not expect to have time to stop and think until he gets to the Albert Park Circuit.
When he does, Cadillac’s team principal plans to share his thoughts with drivers Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez, Zhou Guanyu, Colton Herta and the rest of the garage to give “perspective to everyone involved”, while emphasising the fact the objective was not “simply to establish a team, it’s to go forward”.
“I’ve actually written a note to myself to do that [reflect] because I’ve not done it in the past and subsequently regretted it,” Lowdon told the Post. “I think it is important to be able to share those thoughts with the wider team as well, to reinforce it with everybody just what’s being achieved.”
It is 10 years since an all-new team entered the sport, with Cadillac following in Haas’ 2016 footsteps, not that there was much they could learn from that.