Heat.
Welcome to episode JL's Garage, once again being visited by, I think, automotive royalty. This is Cadillac's entry into F1. This is the 2026 Formula 1 car. As you can see, it's a little smaller than previous years. I can't imagine working in an F1 where they change literally everything every couple of years. It's pretty amazing. Let's meet the man behind this. Mark Reuss, president of General Motors. Come on in, boss. This is your brainchild.
Oh, man. Couldn't be prouder. Great to be here. Thank you.
Thank you. Let me ask you a question now. When I think of performance, well, Cadillac too, certainly, but why not like Corvette and F1 more so than Cadillac? Why the choice to go with Cadillac?
Yeah, it's a great question, and I think probably is on quite a few people's minds as well. You know, Cadillac is undergoing a renaissance and a transformation, but the core values of what Cadillac has always meant has been precision. It's been performance, innovation, and the series here is sort of the tip of the spear for us in terms of motorsports innovation. And you mentioned it, they change everything. So the technical depth required to produce something like this and go racing with it matches really well within the DNA of Cadillac. And you know, our Corvette sports car programs, you know, and IMSA worldwide, our customer programs are very successful too, but in a very different way. So this is, you know, this is the world stage of luxury, and that's why we're there.
Well, it's so funny because it goes all the way back to the early days with the Dewar Trophy, which was Cadillac did something nobody had ever done. And they took three Cadillacs to England, and the English did not believe interchangeable parts. What seems, you know, because they like to go take a little bit off their because there was a joke, an old story about what has more precision parts, a Model T or Rolls-Royce. And it's really the Model T, because when a Rolls-Royce, when a part didn't fit,
they'd plane it, and guys would massage it and get it custom fit.
And cut it, custom fit it, where the Model T, every piece had to be.
That's right. So what Cadillac did way before the Model T, they took three Cadillacs to England. They took them all apart, dumped all the pieces in one big box, dumped the box out again, and put three cars together.
Yeah. And people were like stunned. I mean, especially the English.
Oh, yeah. It's just a little bit of you take a little, but yeah.
And that's how they won the Dewar Trophy. So it's kind of the same thing here. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. You know, it's funny when I go to Europe and I see Asian kids with Cadillac jackets. You know, it just makes me laugh because I grew up in the era when your dad had a Cadillac. That was the car.
You know, the demo was 65 plus.
The lawyer, the doctor in town was all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, right. The bank.
Interesting. Interesting. Well, tell us what we have here. Now, this is the 2026 F1 car.
Smaller than previous generations, which I think is great.
I do too. I mean, you look at historic tracks like Monaco with the longer wheelbase cars, and it was pretty tough racing to watch, and it was very tough for people to pass and really see some of the action that has always made that place famous. So I think they've done a good job with the redesign and the size of the car for that. So I think that's going to be great. The hybridization here is also, you know, a big unknown coming into the season. So that was a big challenge for us, and it's a big challenge for everybody to learn not only how to drive it but how to apply it. And so when you get into that type of integration of the car, it's very sophisticated. So what we're looking at here is really the car that went into Melbourne for the first time, and you know, we got into the series almost exactly a year before that, and we had a year to produce a whole car.
And so that's a big deal, and so the car has never really seen a physical wind tunnel before that.
So right now, that seems almost like the first day seems like window.
I know, but we were under the gun, and I'm so proud of the team because people worked day and night to get the car on the road. And the way that was done was really using our math models and simulation, and actually running races out of our Charlotte technical facility with the drivers, so that we could simulate, you know, what are we doing with the car. But we never really knew the correlation of what the math models were to the physical results of the car. So big unknowns right when we go. And so every race, every lap in this car is a learning cycle for us, which is really impressive. And so our math tools are now, we have on-road experience with the car. And you're going to see this car is evolving. So what you see here today was our first race, and it's, you know, and then the second race we got a lot of data. So you'll see a lot of different aerodynamics pieces. We did have a couple problems with the mirrors.
Which was, hey, I know a guy. We do a lot of mirrors. So I think we got that nailed. But all those things are big challenges, you know, as we go on the track for the first time.
And it's a V6 hybrid, correct?
And what, you have to have 50% hybrid, 50. That's the rule.
Okay. And who makes up these rules? Is it the French? I don't know who.
No, no, no, no. The FIA is really the sanctioning body of it, but the people are the power unit manufacturers, not the teams, but the power unit manufacturers is the voting body on, you know, the powertrain piece of this and what we do and what we buy into, because obviously there's a lot of money spent on the power units for these cars. And so, you know, we want to protect the investments that all the teams and the makers have done, and we want to get a little bit of longevity out of those investments, but we also want to keep improving the sport. So, you know, we're looking two and three years down the road.
Now, this V6 engine, and people might be surprised at the source of this V6 engine.
Yeah. In this car, yes. Again, we've been working on getting into the series for almost four years. And so we wanted to get onto the grid. And you know, Ferrari is a great partner, and so the Ferrari powertrain piece of this has really gone very well, and we're very proud of that. There's a lot of history of General Motors and Ferrari working across each other and putting engines in some of the Ferrari cars that were Chevrolets, and now we're putting a Ferrari engine into a Cadillac. Yeah. And so it's been a great partnership, and yeah, we're very proud.
And former world champion Fangio, he drove for Chevrolet.
He did. He absolutely did. Yeah.
Now you're building your own power plant for the future for.
We are. We have, yeah, and you know, the series is deciding what that looks like right now in terms of cylinder configurations and hybridization or not. So that's all happening right now. And so what we can do is start working on what we call our single-cylinder development, which is the fundamental combustion and how efficient and what the power looks like, and you know, where we place things and how it burns. And so we've been doing that from day one. We had the first V6 Formula 1 engine for Cadillac running in Detroit ever a few months ago. So that was a big milestone. If it changes to a V8 or it does something different, we're ready to do that. But yeah, we're very proud of that. And so we've got really good development tools.
And that's a 1.6 L. Is that correct?
1.6. Yeah.
It's a very, it's about what, 1500 cc.
Yeah. It's not a big engine, right? But it, you know, it's high RPM, right? It's a great engine. So we had, you know, a couple of issues with deployment of the hybrid system, which cost us time, but I got to say, you know, we finished the first race with one car, and we had a little bit of fuel pump contamination that we worked through. And the second race in China, we had two cars finish. And you know, there's quite a few people that did not finish that race. So this is a big learning curve.
And it's unbelievable how technical F1 is, isn't it? You know, I mean, as an American, we kind of go back to NASCAR. You fix it with a hammer and you get back out on the track.
Well, I'll tell you, NASCAR is different now too.
But it is. Yeah. But just the idea of, you know, $1,500 lug nuts because they have to be exactly this much weight and you've got to torque it exact, go a quarter of a pound more on. It's just unbelievable.
It's unbelievable. If you look at the livery here, to that point, you know, we wanted to have a little bit of Cadillac heritage in it, and Cadillac's got a big heritage of bright and chrome and all kinds of things in our history that you'll find in this car if you keep looking at it. However, we said we wanted more of the bright on the car, and the bright is metallic.
Yeah. And so, you know, so we said, 'Okay, we can do a little bit, but we can't do everything.'
That kind of sophistication and technical application into these cars is amazing. The driver load, my goodness, you can see the steering wheel here and what's going on.
Yeah, it's unbelievable what these guys are doing in the car.
And of course, Cadillac has real history. Even at Le Mans in the '50s, they had a car called the Monster. It was like this huge Cadillac, and they kind of flattened the body a little bit and kind of get a little better, some attempt at aerodynamics. I'm not sure what it was, but it was just like, it was like a '59 Cadillac racing a Volkswagen with an open helmet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just unbelievable. So there's some real history there, which I find really exciting. And it just seems clever that Cadillac is one of the few companies that were able to successfully lower their demographic, you know, trying to, like in TV, 'Oh, you want the 18 to 34,' you know, all that kind of nonsense.
And it's really hard to do because people get something in their mind because you don't want to lose your base.
You know, so the fact that Cadillac has both.
I mean, to me, I never thought I'd see the day when the only manual drive sedan you could buy would be a Cadillac. Everybody else is out of that business. If Ferrari's not doing manual, I mean, to me,
and it's a car that'll do over 200 miles an hour.
So, will we see some of this technology in the Blackwing?
Well, you do. And you know, we've developed, this is a highly developed car that's been on the road a few years, not too long, but it's 668 horsepower, you know, blown V8, 6.2 L. And you might see something here that is a little more than what we got, that's a little bit more linked to Formula 1. So it's a great car. This is, you know, over 200 mph car. It's one of the fastest sedans.
Well, I bought my 2012 coupe and I grabbed it because I said, 'We'll never see a manual transmission Cadillac again.' So I wanted to get that right away before they do away, you know, but obviously they didn't. They kept it.
We're the only ones left.
Yeah, I know. That was kind of cool.
I think that's just terrific.
Yeah. Because I think the last stick shift Cadillac was '48.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's a big leap.
And this BMW fighter, whatever you want to call it, the value for the money, it's just unbelievable how fast. It's really fun to drive. Really.
Every day too, by the way. It's not crazy to drive.
Yeah. But you either get the 10-speed or.
The 10-speed is extremely quick as well, you know.
Quicker. Yeah, it's quicker, but not as fun.
Yeah, that's, well, that's, I like the fact that they're focusing on the fun of it because so many, you know, yeah, it's fun to go through the gear, experience all that.
Absolutely. Well, very cool. Well, we're going to, you know, if you think about our road cars here and you mentioned one of them, you know, we're going to leverage some of the F1 piece of this for fun for customers too. You might see something that's linked to Formula 1.
Oh, you might see something. I like the little subtlety. I wonder what that could be.
Yeah, it could be. It could be very interesting.
Yeah. No, I think it is very interesting. I like the fact that it keeps innovating, you know. Yeah. I mean, to me, I really laugh when Cadillac went from a round taillight to a square taillight. 'Well, that's it. That's not a Corvette anymore.' I mean, Corvette's not Corvette. It doesn't have a round taillight. 'I'm never buying another one.' 80-year-old guy, you know. Yeah. So it's funny that you have to keep innovating.
Yeah, you really do. And you got to think about what's going to be really popular before people even know what they think is going to be really popular, you know, and desirable.
I know. Because I mean, these cars were huge with V10 engines. Now we're back to 1.6 L, and we're running synthetic fuels, and it's not even gasoline anymore.
No, it's an interesting fuel. Yeah. Very interesting.
Yeah. And what, they come in sealed drums, and people watch you put it in so that.
There's so much cheating that goes on.
I mean, it's really exciting.
This is the last series in the world, I'll say. And this is why it was highly desirable for us to get into it too. This is sort of the last series in the world that you actually are making every single part of this car, and the subtleties you see, some of the deployment of active aero is very different between makers. And the joy of this is we're doing the whole car, and the learning out of that is leveraging, you know, the home company obviously in Charlotte and Detroit. And then to begin with, we had a Silverstone facility, now we're going to open in Fishers, Indiana, and that'll be the headquarters here where we're actually going to, you know, be building the cars for it. And so that's coming here this year, which is very exciting. So this will be, you know, this is pretty much an all-American deal here. And in the future, we'll have the full works powertrain.
And F1 is brutal because everything is an experiment. So you have to try it. You got to try it.
And if it doesn't work, oh, you're an idiot. You're a jerk.
A piece of crap car. I mean, I've seen people who were champions last year. This year, they're not even in the running. I mean, it's just unbelievable how brutal it is. And you literally have, because you got some, well, we got this that works, but that doesn't work in Formula 1.
And someone takes a picture of it and says, 'Well, we're going to do that.'
Oh, there's all that going on too. Right. So it's a great hyper-competitive environment, and our people learn from that, and they learn very quickly. So it's, you know, every week you're doing this, and I want that in our engineering and our product development. And it's been a great ride here so far.
And when you say it's 50/50 hybrid, so let's say you make 1,000 horsepower, 500 has to be electric and 500. How does that work?
Well, it's changing because I just read on the way over here that it's changing for the Japan race. So, you know, this is, yeah, I mean, deployment is an ongoing thing here. So, yeah, it really is.
But is that how they, when you say 50? Because it's not front-wheel drive, obviously.
No, it all goes through the rear wheel.
Yeah, it's all a transmission. And how does a hybrid system work? Does it spin a transmission? It's not.
It spins the trans. Yeah. It's really not a transmission, but it's a, yeah, yeah, it's the rear gearbox and transaxle.
Yeah.
Does everybody have to have the same number of gears in the transmission, or somebody can't have a, have different ratios?
