Class leading performance may still be a long-term work in progress for Cadillac, but with short-term respectability achieved F1’s 11th team has also tried to make a rapid off-track impact. F1 branding in general was almost impossible to escape in Miami, and Cadillac carved out its own space by taking over Jungle Plaza in the Miami Design District for a free, two-day fan event, with an appearance by Sergio Perez on Saturday and a heavy presence for team sponsors Jim Beam and Tommy Hilfiger.
GM also featured F1-centred Cadillac ads in Miami International Airport, while Cadillac brought a car display to the Hard Rock Stadium, which hosts the grand prix. Tying in its F1 presence with its road cars was the reveal of its CT5-V Blackwing F1 Collector Series production car, a limit run of 26 units presented by GM CEO Mary Barra at Friday’s Autosport Business Exchange.
Cadillac presented a limited CT5-V Blackwing F1 Collector Series inspired by its F1 entry.
Photo by: Cadillac
When it became clear the initially Andretti-led effort to enter Formula 1 was going to bring the full brunt of GM’s might, the perception of the value F1’s first expansion team in a decade could bring to the series shifted overnight.
Miami provided a first sample of that as a key pillar in the squad’s plan to attract a large fanbase, which went well beyond the customary one-off livery teams tend to roll out. “I think we gained a lot of new fans,” team principal Graeme Lowdon told Motorsport.com on Sunday night. “We had a lot of activations, including a really successful activation at Jungle Plaza.
“We wanted to use it to celebrate the fact that the team’s here and to give something back to the fans. We’d always said in the entry phase that we wanted to bring something different, and certainly those activations did. It’s been very busy with partners. We have a lot of US partners, and it was great for them to come and experience it.”
Cadillac ran a stars and stripes clad custom livery in Miami, but celebrating its homecoming went a lot further than that.
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
While Cadillac boasts two popular drivers in veteran grand prix winners Perez and Valtteri Bottas, success is still going to be long-term aspiration as the squad isn’t expected to contend for points any time soon. Despite the budget cap, there is little competitive parity in F1 compared to North American big league sports like the NFL or NBA, so for fans to be drawn to a new team that finishes a lapped 16th is not a straightforward proposition, with all due respect.
“No, no issue taken,” Lowdon replies when the above is put to him. “This is the most difficult sport in the world. It’s very, very difficult to come in and deliver success. You’re quite right, there’s a certain kind of fan who will just want to celebrate instant success, and that’s all.
“But we’re able to deliver something completely different. What we can do is encourage fans to join us on this really unique journey. I think it’s a much richer experience for those that want to embrace the sport, come along with the journey that we’re on. The feeling of achievement is so much more fulfilling.
“A lot of the activations have been in that direction, and it’s also given our partners – some of whom are new to Formula 1 – the ability to really see the power of what the platform can do. It’s been really, really busy all round.”
Cadillac’s upgraded MAC-26 car was abler to race Aston Martin on pace, a first step towards the bulk of F1’s midfield.
Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images
That’s all well and good, but at the end of the day F1 is a competition first. It’s the stopwatch that will decide if Cadillac’s F1 entry is a genuine success, not its number of social media followers. As part of that process, the team introduced its first major upgrade package focused on a re-profiled underbody and front wing. Introducing that package to good effect on a busy sprint weekend felt like a second major milestone for Cadillac following its Australia debut.
“Actually, the life of the team is so short that every grand prix is a really special event at the moment,” Lowdon added. “I think we’ve made a really big step forward here in a number of areas. The upgrades have worked how we wanted them to work, which gives us confidence that the next ones will equally deliver as well. We’ve got an almost constant stream of things in the pipeline. We made some steps forward operation as well, these pitstops are very slick.
“It was a shame we didn’t get through to SQ2 [on Friday], because we certainly had the pace to do that. But we learned a lot from that, so a lot of positive things that we can take from here to Montreal.”
Graeme Lowdon with Terry Crews.
Photo by: Brett Farmer / LAT Images via Getty Images
Having been able to battle with Aston Martin on pace, Lowdon felt Miami made him confident the team is on the right track. “I’m comfortable with where we’re at with that,” he said.
“I hope the fans realise that this is the most difficult sport in the world. You can’t just come in here and blow the doors off everyone else. It just doesn’t work that way, but you can build really, really solid foundations that would support constant improvement going forward. It does take time to do it, but I’m really happy with the trajectory that we’re on to achieve that.
“We’ve got really solid foundations for what we hope will be a very special team. I think we leave Miami still as a very, very young team in terms of the number of grands prix, but doing a huge amount of learning, and it’s accumulating all the time.”
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