Cadillac will roll onto the Miami Grand Prix grid this weekend wearing a stripped-down, black-and-white livery built around a Stars and Stripes motif. It’s a one-off design marking the team’s first Formula 1 race on American soil.
It is a quiet flex in a paddock that has turned the Miami weekend into an arms race of branded nonsense. Mercedes showed up in Teletubby-colored racing suits. Half the grid is hawking limited-edition sneakers and coffee collaborations. Cadillac, the newest team on the grid and the one with the most to prove, chose restraint.
The livery keeps the team’s established identity intact while weaving in patriotic elements that read as confident rather than cartoonish. Cassidy Towriss, Cadillac’s Chief Brand Advisor, called it “deliberate and confident” and said the goal was ensuring fans “still recognize what they’ve come to know.” That discipline is rare in modern F1 marketing, where special liveries often look like they were designed by committee during an energy drink binge.
Drivers Sergio “Checo” Perez and Valtteri Bottas will also wear Miami-specific race suits, though the team has kept those under wraps ahead of the weekend.
The real story here isn’t paint. It’s context. Cadillac, backed by General Motors, is the first genuinely American constructor to enter Formula 1 in decades.
Haas has technically carried that flag since 2016, but the team is based in the UK, runs Ferrari power units, and has never leaned hard into its American identity. Cadillac is doing something different. It is building its own power unit, planting its flag, and treating a race in Miami like what it actually is: a homecoming for thousands of GM employees and engineers who spent years getting this project to the grid.
That makes the livery choice feel less like a marketing stunt and more like a statement of intent. In a sport where new entrants historically spend their first seasons apologizing for being slow, Cadillac is acting like it belongs. The branding is polished, the messaging is controlled, and whether the car is fast enough to back it up is another question entirely.
Formula 1’s American expansion has been one of the sport’s defining storylines over the past five years. Three races now sit on the U.S. calendar — Austin, Miami, and Las Vegas — and the commercial push into American culture has been relentless. But having American races is not the same as having an American team that matters.
Cadillac is trying to close that gap, and doing it with a level of brand sophistication that most legacy teams still struggle to match.
The Miami Grand Prix weekend is a circus by design. Liberty Media built it that way — a glitzy, celebrity-soaked spectacle meant to sell the sport to people who might not know a DRS zone from a drive-through penalty. Most teams play along eagerly, slapping logos on everything that moves.
Cadillac’s approach suggests it understands something the others keep missing. You don’t have to shout to be heard. You just have to show up looking like you mean it.
Whether the car finishes 15th or fights for points, that black-and-white livery will be one of the sharpest things on track this weekend. For a team running its first home grand prix, that is not a small thing.
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