Dan Towriss names the three Formula 1 teams he considered buying before starting up Cadillac

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Dan Towriss, the Cadillac F1 Team CEO, has revealed that he held discussions with three teams in an attempt to buy them.

The Cadillac Formula 1 Team entered the sport at the start of the 2026 season, with the Australian Grand Prix marking their first Grand Prix as a team.

For their first official year in the sport, Cadillac have Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez lining up on the grid. At the Australian Grand Prix, Bottas had to retire from the race due to a fuel system issue, whereas Perez saw the chequered flag and finished 16th.

However, before the Cadillac Formula 1 Team were established for the 2026 season, there was a chance that they would not have existed if previous behind-the-scenes negotiations had gone differently.

Dan Towriss discusses the three teams he approached to buy

Whilst discussing the decision to set up the Cadillac F1 team on F1 Beyond The Grid, the Cadillac F1 team CEO, Dan Towriss revealed the three teams he attempted to buy.

It was during this that Towriss discussed his deal with Michael Andretti from four or five years ago when he was attempting to acquire Sauber with Andretti.

However, once the deal with Andretti and Sauber fell through, Towriss revealed that he spoke to Gene Haas about buying Haas, and discussed becoming a partner in Williams.

But in the end, after no negotiations materialised, Towriss and his partners decided to set up the Cadillac F1 Team.

Towriss said, “It goes back four or five years ago, Michael Andretti was looking at getting into Formula 1. He said ‘I have this Formula 1 thing, do you want to be an investor in the team’. I had a look and wanted to get in for 10 or 20% of the deal.

“That was the first time that my partners and I would have started to look at Formula 1. As that process went on a lot of those investors were not real. I had this conversation with Michael where I said, ‘That investors syndicate, they are not real. That’s the bad news, the good news is we will take the whole thing’.

“That started our pursuit of the Sauber transaction back when we were talking about possibly buying that team.

He added, “A lot of it was reported on with discussions of ‘Hey Gene, do you want to sell the team?’, we talked to Williams about taking a partner, and stuff like that.

“But there were not any opportunities, and looking back, those would not have been the right thing for us anyway in terms of what we wanted to do.”

He later continued, “There was not a team for sale, so it was like, let’s start a brand new team. It felt like it needed to happen, and so we just pursued it. Never once did we think this was not going to happen or that we should quit.

“Every time we hit an obstacle, we just got better over time.”

Cadillac Formula 1 team has arrived with their maiden livery for 2026 🔥

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Sergio Perez was ‘not happy at all’ with Cadillac’s F1 debut

After his first Grand Prix with Cadillac at the opening race of the 2026 Formula 1 season, Sergio Perez was unhappy with his first competitive outing.

Mexican F1 expert Diego Mejia was quick to point out how ‘Checo was not happy at all’ after finishing in 16th place at the Australian Grand Prix.

After his first Qualifying session with Cadillac, Perez was quick to tell the BBC that ‘Formula 1 is very different from what I remember.’

With a sudden return to Formula 1 after a year away from the sport, it may take the Mexican driver time to find his feet again in the new era of Formula 1 cars.