Cadillac F1 will arrive in 2026 as the 11th Formula 1 team on the starting grid. The team is working at Andretti Global's premises to launch its Ferrari-powered project in a year's time, while its American engine made in General Motors will arrive later.
While the financial distribution will be impacted and an anti-dilution fund will be created for this, it also remained to be seen how the technique would be managed, particularly for the development handicaps which affect the best teams.
The ATR, which regulates factory aerodynamic testing, provides teams that finished at the back of the grid with more wind tunnel and CFD testing, and the question was how Cadillac would be treated.
It appears that this discussion took place at an F1 Commission meeting before the agreement in principle for the new team's participation was announced. Cadillac will thus be treated as a team equal to the last in 2024.
Just like Sauber, which finished last in the constructors' championship in 2024, Cadillac will receive this year, and for the first 6 months of 2026, 115% of the base allocation that the sixth team in the championship normally receives (100%).
So far, the team has been able to do its basic research without restrictions, but this was obviously theoretical since the aerodynamic regulations are not known in detail, precisely to avoid any advantage.
Some teams have complained about the advantage that the newcomer to Formula 1 could gain, but the colossal work of arriving without a technical base and with a completely new project limits this advantage.
The rest of the benefits for Cadillac will be via Ferrari, which will be able to supply the team, as well as its other customers, with its suspension and brake ducts, and its gearbox in addition to the engine which is at the center of the agreement.
For the development of the engine for 2028, General Motors will have resources equal to the rest of the field with a budgetary ceiling which now also concerns engine development.
