‘Mario Andretti said he wanted to talk’: how Cadillac hired F1 team boss Graeme Lowdon
For Graeme Lowdon, his journey to becoming team principal at Cadillac F1 began with a conversation with Mario Andretti – who, despite his age, remains a dynamo of energy...
Lowdon’s initial involvement was advising Michael Andretti, pictured, and Mario on how to get into F1
“I was driving down the A1, and I got a call from someone whose opinion I respect, and they said, ‘Would you take a call from the group that are involved with Andretti looking at F1?’”
That’s Graeme Lowdon talking of his introduction to the Cadillac project he now fronts.
“This was on the tail end of when they were looking to originally buy Sauber, and that didn’t work out, so they decided they wanted to look at a new entry,” he continues. “We had a call – the backers of the project were on it, as were Michael and Mario Andretti. My involvement began with advising them on how to go through the entry process to F1. And I remember that call ended with Mario saying, ‘OK this sounds good – you know how the process works.’
“When you’ve got the 1978 world champion telling you something like that, it sticks in your mind. I remember thinking, ‘I’d better not let him down!’”
The Andretti Global Facility opened at Silverstone in 2024. The project has since been rebranded
Although Michael Andretti’s well-documented personality clash with former Liberty CEO Greg Maffei didn’t help the team’s prospects of approval, father Mario is still involved with Cadillac, the 85-year-old holding an ambassadorial role.
Lowdon is a successful man in a high-pressure world, but allows an endearing glimpse of a man who was a schoolboy fan of F1 when he discusses Mario.
“You can tell a world champion when you’re talking to them, you can tell a racer,” he says. “He’s still a hugely competitive spirit, and a guy with a huge amount of energy, and what’s clear is a love of F1. It’s cool when you look back at the history of what he did; he did that because he loved F1, when he was racing on both sides of the Atlantic, just racing everything going but moving heaven and earth to be involved because he had that love from a very early age – and it’s still there and it’s quite infectious.”
That, of course, was instilled in Andretti and twin brother Aldo as young boys in Italy before their family emigrated. “That crawling under the fence at Monza and watching the cars, that’s what gave him the spark and fuelled it all,” smiles Lowdon. “For me, that twinkle’s still there in his eyes. We talk every so often. It’s good; we’re a racing team, we’re not a corporate conglomerate, so we should have those conversations.”