Graeme Lowdon has revealed Cadillac advertised for 595 roles to build its Formula 1 team before it was even allowed to say it was going F1 racing.
What followed became one of the largest recruitment exercises seen in modern F1, as Lowdon, in his role as Team Principal, attempted to assemble a race-ready organisation before the operation officially existed within the sport.
Building a works F1 team from the ground up has indeed been a tough challenge for Lowdon, TWG Motorsports and General Motors – especially as it began life not even being able to reference its aim of racing in the sport.
“We put a lot of job adverts out before we had the entry, but we were not allowed to use the words ‘Formula 1’ because we do not have the rights,” explained Lowdon.
“So, we put adverts out saying, ‘position available in top-tier motorsport’, which became the secret word for Formula 1.
“My job is to assemble the best team. Ultimately, there’ll be a thousand players, and I need to get them on the pitch, if you like, and compete with the best teams in the world.
“Trust me, building a Formula One team from scratch is really, really, really difficult!”
The scale of the recruitment drive, coupled with the dwindling timeframe to get the right people on board posed another significant challenge to Lowdon, even once he had inventively overcome the F1 rights issue.
“We advertised 595 positions. We had – and acknowledged – 143,265 applications,” he revealed.
Trust me, building a Formula One team from scratch is really, really, really difficult!
Graeme Lowdon
“We shortlisted 9,051 people, and we interviewed just over 6,500. That in itself is just an enormous task that the other teams do not have to do.
“We set a target of hiring 525 people by 31st December 2025. We thought that was the minimum you needed just to turn up. By 31st December we had hired 520. So we are just a couple short.”
Once the right people were identified and hired, Lowdon’s next job was to ensure this newly assembled team – brought together from other factories up and down the F1 ecosystem – functioned as one.
To do this, the team staged race weekend simulations from early on in the 2025 season, replicating the real-world grand prix to bring together the Cadillac approach long before the first fire-up.
“We have been simulating race weekends since Barcelona ‘25, so we have competed virtually in quite a lot of grands prix now,” added Lowdon.
“in the virtual world, it is so much easier. But what struck me in the very first simulation that we did, we had all these people from different teams. I remember sitting there on the virtual pit wall with a headset on, using exactly the same systems that we will be using in Melbourne, and listening to the engineers talk to each other.
“You could tell which teams they had come from just because of their radio protocols. And by the time we did the last simulation in Abu Dhabi, what I was hearing was that Cadillac Formula 1 team instead of people who had come from Mercedes or McLaren or Ferrari or wherever.
“You can take the most experienced people in the world, but this isn’t an individual sport.”
Lowdon first accepted a job to launch what is now the Cadillac F1 Team into the sport following a phone call with Mario Andretti in late 2022.
The former Virgin Racing and Marussia Chief Executive Officer was soon on board a project that endured a bumpy ride in landing its Formula 1 entry, and that destination sees Cadillac debut in Australia in March.
But if the journey seemed tough going at times, littered with roadblocks and obstacles, just getting off the ground to begin with gave Lowdon enough headaches.
“I was driving down the A1 in Newcastle and I got a phone call from someone whose opinion I trust. And they asked would I take a call from Michael and Mario Andretti to talk about how do you enter Formula 1,” he said during a panel at the Autosport Business Exchange London.
“So I took the phone call. They had been trying to buy Sauber but that transaction fell through. I was kind of in the right place at the right time, I remember it very well because I explained what we need to do.
“I’ve been through the process before and I’ve also touched on the 2013 and 2015 process in a much smaller way. I have to say the process that we went through was significantly more rigorous. But it should be.
“It’s the pinnacle of world motorsport. So it’s meant to be difficult.”
Since then, factories have been built, experienced drivers Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas have been signed, and a car has been created ready for Cadillac to debut.
A shakedown of the new car took place at Silverstone last week, with the team heading to Barcelona in the coming days for the behind-closed-doors test. Then it will take part in the two pre-season tests in Bahrain before debuting for real in Melbourne on March 9.
“I literally did not have a grey hair on my head when we started,” said Lowdon.
“The only thing that stressed me was the Newcastle United result. And then, here we go again, build a team from scratch. It is difficult.
“It is really, really, really difficult. And to do it in a compressed time period is difficult. So the pride I felt on Friday (at Silverstone) was actually, it was just a reflection for me of the team.
“Everyone in our team was able to point at that car and they will have been responsible for one component or a bunch of components or sub-assembly, but they’d be able to say, I did that.
“For me, that’s super important in trying to build a team to compete against the best teams in the world.”
