Lowdon pleased with Cadillac’s start on ‘hectic’ first day in Australia

Cadillac Team Principal Graeme Lowdon felt the squad met their objective to “start racing” on what was a “hectic” first day for them at the Australian Grand Prix – with both cars gaining mileage despite some issues.

With the team having been limited to running one car at a time during testing, Friday’s practice sessions in Melbourne marked the first occasion where both Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez had been able to run at the same time.

While the day was not without its problems – with each car losing wing mirrors during Free Practice 1, before Perez’s time on the circuit in second practice was affected by issues on the car – Lowdon felt the American outfit had achieved a lot by getting their debut race weekend underway.

“It was very hectic because it’s the first time we’ve ever run two cars!” the Briton explained between the two practice hours. “The regulations allow you to run one [in testing]. So far, the whole project has been a series of firsts and today was another one of those.

“But if we just focus on the work that was done, we had some upgrades here, we ran through a programme, we had a couple of issues during the session, which I don’t think is unusual. We lost a couple of wing mirrors, but these are the kind of problems that we can iron out and work on.

“I think on a project like this it’s very easy to see Melbourne as the end objective, and it’s not. Obviously, it’s our first ever Grand Prix for Cadillac Formula 1 Team, so this isn’t our objective. Our objective is to start racing, and that’s what it felt like for me. It was the start of a very, very, very long journey.”

With Bottas classifying ahead of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly in first practice, Lowdon was quizzed on whether this gave him confidence for the remainder of the weekend.

“I think there’s a general lack of confidence in everyone,” he responded. “It’s FP1 and nobody knows really where they’re at. We know we’ve got a huge amount of work, but also, I’ve been super lucky on this project.

“I’ve had a front-row seat to see just what’s being achieved by everybody, not just in Indianapolis but in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Silverstone. It’s hard. This is the greatest team sport in the world but it’s the most difficult team sport in the world.

“The competition is just insane and it’s so, so difficult, and we know that. So, do we take confidence? I mean, we have a very, very grounded appreciation of just what it takes to try and build a team, and this is the first step in a long way.

“Also, I’d very much like to take this opportunity to thank not just everybody in the team but everybody behind everybody in the team, so the families, the friends, the husbands, the wives, the boyfriends, the girlfriends, the family members.

“That’s the rock that we build the team on, and there’s no way we could do this without all of that support. So, I just want to take this opportunity to thank all those people, and hopefully a lot of them are at home watching.

“There’s nowhere to hide in Formula 1, so this is our first time we’ve run two cars and you’ve got to do it in front of a few hundred million people, but that’s Formula 1. That’s what we’ve always wanted to do.”

Perez, meanwhile, shared his thoughts after FP2, with the Mexican hopeful that he can gain more lap time on Saturday following his limited running.

“Unfortunately we had too many issues out there,” he explained. “We couldn’t get any long-running in, which was important. That was the main thing really of today, not getting enough running. Hopefully tomorrow can be more straightforward – hopefully we can try the tyres and see what we have.

“I don’t know what happened there in the end [with the car] – it seems like an issue with the engine, so hopefully that doesn’t put us too much on the back foot for tomorrow and we are able to have a clean FP3, because we really need some data for tomorrow.

“For now it’s just very important to be able to progress through and stop having these little issues that are costing us a lot of track time.”