Formula 1 News: Cadillac F1 talking to 8 drivers for its 2 seats

The Cadillac F1 Team is considering as many as eight different drivers for its two seats when the team joins Formula 1 next year, using Ferrari engines to start.

Team principal Graeme Lowden said preliminary discussions are already underway with some drivers.

“We are either planning or have spoken to probably seven or eight drivers altogether I would guess,” the Cadillac team boss told Speed City. “It’ll be no surprise that anybody who has got recent Formula 1 experience would be included in that list.

“But I would stress that at the moment any discussions are very preliminary. They are just really trying to get to know what people’s interest levels are, what their motivations are, and that kind of thing. So we’re certainly not in advanced discussion with any driver.”

Lowden admitted the team is “in a lucky position” as several experienced, race-winning former Formula 1 drivers left the series last year, such as Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez.

“There’s a bunch of people with a lot of experience,” he said. “Not just turn-up-and-drive experienced, people who’ve been at championship-winning teams, or race-winning or whatever.

“But also people who are younger who’ve got experience as well, so that’s another angle. Also promising drivers who haven’t yet had a grand prix experience but they’ve proven themselves in junior formula and junior categories as well.

“So considering we were not able to be active in that last driver market, we’re actually in a reasonably good position at the moment in terms of putting together a driver line-up for ’26.

“We’ve said a number of times the driver line-up selection will be on merit and I’m happy that all of the drivers that we’re having early discussions with are perfectly capable Formula 1 drivers and perfectly capable of leading a good professional team.”

Lowden said the team is monitoring the progress of two American drivers in series outside F1: Colton Herta in IndyCar and Jak Crawford, who is part of Aston Martin’s young driver program, in Formula 2.

Andretti Global driver Colton Herta under consideration for one Cadillac seat

“Colton’s obviously started the IndyCar season now. He was unlucky in the first race, I would say, drove very well and finished fourth in the last race.

“Obviously, we’re very interested to see how Jak goes in Formula 2. The first round in Melbourne was a bit disrupted.

“As we’ve said before, I think everybody would expect a Formula 1 team to hire their drivers on merit and that’s what we’ll do. But as we often have said before, we would have one or more drivers from the US under consideration.”