Long-standing F1 curse makes Cadillac seat a poisoned chalice for Ricciardo, Perez and more

Photo: © IMAGO

Cadillac

Long-standing F1 curse makes Cadillac seat a poisoned chalice for Ricciardo, Perez and more

It's not a good century to be a new F1 team

Chris Deeley

Sunday 8 June 2025 21:57 Updated: 23:27

Cadillac's F1 team are probably going to disappear into history without winning a single race.

That isn't a judgement on how they, Andretti and General Motors have gone about their business in setting up the team and its bases, it's just the cold hard truth of F1 history.

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No team founded in the 21st century has won a race. Not one. Not a single flukey rain-affected race, not a single Sunday afternoon when the planets were in alignment far away in the skies above, not any kind of black magic.

Let's have a look at the history of what, at this point, seems like a curse laid by a malignant spirit.

Just to define our parameters here, we're talking about new teams, the way Cadillac are coming in. Just buying another team and rebadging it (looking at you, Red Bull Racing, née Jaguar, née Stewart Racing) doesn't count, for obvious reasons.

New teams in F1 all meet a grim fate

The last truly new team to arrive in the sport were Haas, back in 2016. They're entering their 200th race next weekend in Montreal, in their tenth season as a team, and they're yet to even snatch a podium finish. Romain Grosjean secured the team's best-ever finish, fourth at the 2018 Austrian Grand Prix – and even then, he finished more than a lap down.

Before them, there was Campos Meta 1. Don't remember them? That's because they were sold and made Hispania Racing before they even started a single race (never trust the Metaverse's promises, eh?), and then became HRT Formula 1 Team. They lasted three years and scored no points.

That same year, Virgin entered the scene, becoming Marussia after two years and then Manor toward the end of their life. They left F1 after seven seasons, with as many points as names. Three points in seven years.

Hey, look! It's three of the doomed teams in one picture!

Lotus were fun, because they weren't even the most notable team running with that name in F1 in the 2000s. The good Lotus team, the one Kimi Raikkonen won two races for, were just a brief rebadging of the Renault team. Team Lotus, they were the 2010 newbies. And they were not good.

Team Lotus/Lotus Racing lasted two years before being rebranded as Caterham, who made it three more years before folding. Neither version of the team scored a point, although they did manage to make the Renault/Lotus situation even more confusing by running Renault engines every year after their first.

Super Aguri existed from 2006 until 2008, scored four points and folded. The most successful new team of the century was actually its first, Toyota. Entering the sport in 2002, they made it eight years! Good for them! While they never won a race, they did get five second-place finishes (three from Jarno Trulli, two from Timo Glock) before exiting the sport as a constructor after the 2009 season.

This is the realm that Cadillac are stepping into. There have been historic motorsport brands, there have been massively funded commercial owners, F1's had it all, and none of it's brought a race win, in 36 collective seasons of racing.

Maybe Cadillac can buck the trend. General Motors have deep pockets and a whole lot of racing history, after all. What they don't have, though, is institutional memory and the knowledge that brings. The first years of running an F1 team overwhelmingly involves wasting your time trying ideas – mostly behind the scenes – that other teams already know don't work.

Nobody in the sport should be looking at Cadillac as a prime seat to squabble over. Anyone who signs up is signing up to be a backmarker, to spend what might well be their last shot in the sport squabbling over the chance to get out of Q1 on a Saturday. For the likes of Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo, it's just an undignified way to end great careers.

One note of optimism though?

The last brand new F1 team to win a race was the Stewart team that was formed in 1997, which took its first victory in 1999 when Johnny Herbert won the European Grand Prix. Yes, the Stewart team that became Jaguar...and then Red Bull.

There's a world championship in it as long as you wait well over a decade, avoid all the spiked pits that the other teams ran into, and then get bought by an energy drink giant. Everyone, get those 'Monster Energy Racing, constructors champions 2040' hats made!

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