EXCLUSIVE: Lowdon on why Zhou ‘ticked all of the boxes’ as a reserve for Cadillac

Two months before the team make their debut on the grid at the Australian Grand Prix, another name has been announced as part of Cadillac’s driver line-up for 2026, with Zhou Guanyu joining the American outfit as their reserve driver.

Following the signings of Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez as race drivers last summer, the squad have continued to add to their wider roster, having recruited former IndyCar racer Colton Herta as test driver while their line-up of developments drivers includes previous Haas reserve Pietro Fittipaldi.

Zhou has now joined the group off the back of a season spent acting as a reserve driver for Ferrari, which followed on from his three-year spell on the grid with the Alfa Romeo/Kick Sauber outfit.

Cadillac made no secret of wanting experienced names on board when it came to signing the race drivers for their first-ever campaign in Formula 1, and Team Principal Graeme Lowdon admits that this was also a key draw of signing Zhou.

“You’ll see from the race driver selection that, as a new team, we've put a lot of emphasis on experience and driver experience, and clearly Zhou is very, very experienced,” Lowdon tells F1.com following the announcement.

“He's had three years of racing in Formula 1, and so, unlike some of the other candidates – who may well have very good credentials in the junior formula and are looking perhaps to get a foothold into Formula 1 – the key thing for us, throughout the entire driver line-up, is to work with very, very experienced people who can contribute to the overall programme.

“I think it's very easy to underestimate just what is needed to bring a new team into Formula 1; as you know, Formula 1 is unbelievably competitive.

"It's highly complex, it's such a big step from any other formula, and so having drivers throughout the whole driver programme who just know exactly what they're doing – and none of this is new to any of them, apart from the fact it's a brand-new team – is really, really important. That played a big factor in the selection of Zhou.”

Why Zhou’s signing ‘made a lot of sense’

Zhou’s recent experience of working with Ferrari – who will supply Cadillac’s power unit and gearbox in 2026 – also went in the Chinese driver’s favour during the process of selecting a reserve.

“I have a lot of respect for Ferrari,” Lowdon explains. “It's a team we've worked with before in the past; I know the people there very well. I know just how highly they valued Zhou's input in 2025, which was another big factor for us.

“It also means that, in some way, that Zhou staying in that overall family, he's had experience of development and experience of the 2026 tyres, and also just experience in operating in a top-class, very competitive team.

“So from our point of view, it just ticked all of the boxes in so many ways; the experience, the direct experience with Ferrari, who are our partner for the power unit and the gearbox, and so it just made a lot of sense for him to join the team.”

The move will also see Zhou reunite with Bottas, his former Kick Sauber team mate with whom he shared a good relationship – and this proved to be another element that appealed in bringing the 26-year-old onboard.

“Another factor that we look for is the chemistry between all of the drivers, and we know already that the relationship between Checo and Valtteri is a really strong one – and I have no doubts as well that in selecting Zhou, based on seeing how he's worked with Valtteri over the last few years, that that working relationship would be very conducive to the overall goals of the team,” says Lowdon.

“It kind of goes without saying that these guys are all very, very fast. We've said it a number of times before that we select all of the drivers in our programme on merit. We would have no qualms about any of these drivers getting in the car and racing in a Formula 1 Grand Prix.”

How recruiting the right reserve driver adds ‘a lot’ to a team

While Zhou will not be on the grid in 2026, Lowdon – who has worked with Zhou as part of the Chinese driver’s management team – has stressed how crucial the reserve role is for Cadillac, particularly in terms of preparing for this season’s new wave of technical regulations.

“Having a good, experienced reserve driver just adds that little bit extra to – or adds a lot extra, actually – to just how fast the team can both gel together and compete,” he explained.

“That's another element I should mention; I've known Zhou for a while, so I know he's very, very committed. He's very much a team player, and that's absolutely what we need as a new team. He's very respectful and technically extremely knowledgeable and extremely good.

“He has a very good feel for the car, and also a very good feel for what we think are the elements of racing that are going to be important in 2026 with all of the new regulation changes.”

Prior to selecting Zhou for the position – in which his duties will include working closely with Bottas and Perez along with the wider engineering team, providing technical insight and carrying out simulator work – the team went through what Lowdon described in the announcement of Zhou’s signing as a “thorough” process in choosing the right candidate.

When asked about what this involved, the Team Principal responds: “It actually goes back some time to when we were also looking at the selection of the race drivers for 2026. We spoke to a lot of drivers.

“We are out of synchronisation with a lot of the other teams in terms of driver contracts, and so that actually meant that we had quite a lot of time to meet people, talk about different people's plans and just really select the best line-up that we can for 2026.

“We've talked to a lot of drivers within the TWG and GM family, there are an awful lot of drivers as well, so we actually have direct relationships with a whole bunch of drivers. And that just gives us a really good opportunity to look at what is the best line-up going forward, not just in 2026 but looking ahead beyond that as well. I'm really, really happy with the overall line-up that we've got.”

‘No competitive issue’ between Zhou and Herta

That line-up will see Zhou work alongside Herta, who will embark on his maiden F2 season as well as acting as Cadillac’s test driver. Does Lowdon expect Zhou’s experience to be beneficial in supporting the American racer?

“I would hope so,” says Lowdon. “All formula move on year to year, but also there are elements that stay in the DNA of a particular formula, and obviously Formula 2 is a formula that Zhou competed in very successfully, and so I would hope that he'd be able to impart some of that knowledge onto Colton.

“They’re team mates now, and everybody wants everyone within the team to do well, so I would hope that that's going to be an advantage. These are younger guys, still with plenty of Formula 1 opportunity ahead of them, both of them, so I can see that being a really productive relationship.

“There's no kind of competitive issue here. Zhou is the reserve driver – he has a super licence, he's the guy who would jump in to replace one of the race drivers if needed. Colton doesn't have super licence – he qualifies as a rookie, therefore he can do FP1 sessions that Zhou can't do.

“So there's some real synergy here, and I'm looking forward to working with a whole group of drivers – race drivers, reserve, test, sim drivers – all working together with the objective of maximising the potential of this brand-new team.”

As Lowdon touched on, Zhou still has the potential to make a return to the grid in the future; indeed, the driver from Shanghai spoke earlier last year of holding the long-term goal of making an F1 comeback.

In terms of what the future holds for the team’s new reserve driver, Lowdon believes that the position offers an ideal opportunity to keep Zhou at the “forefront of people’s minds in Formula 1, both in his role now and also potential opportunities for the future”.

“It's incredibly difficult to get race seats in Formula 1 – we all know that,” he concedes. “But the best way to do that is to demonstrate speed and ability as a team player, and if you're not actually on the grid racing, then the next best platform to be able to do that is as a reserve driver.

“We've seen that with Valtteri as well, in the position he's had at Mercedes in the last year. It means that you stay relevant, you stay connected. You understand exactly what's happening day to day with Formula 1, and in Formula 1 change is just at such an incredible rate all of the time that that's really important as well.”

The ‘start of school term’ vibe at Cadillac

For now Zhou’s focus will be on settling in at Cadillac as the squad get ever nearer to their debut, which will involve him spending time with his new team mates.

“It's quite interesting at the moment, because it's literally only kind of in this last week that everybody's contractually free,” smiles Lowdon. “They've done all of their commitments from the previous teams, and so there's a real kind of start of school term feeling, and I think that exists amongst the drivers as well.

“They all know each other really well. They'll all be together in the next few days with various activities, some engineering, some promotional, some marketing, and that gives them a chance to get to know each other further. But I think there's no shortage of interaction between them all and, as I said before, it's a really good chemistry mix.

“Everyone knows what their role is. Everyone knows what they need to do. There's a real opportunity for everyone to excel and do well, and for the team to benefit from that as well. So I think going forward into 2026, I generally think we've got a really, really strong roster of drivers throughout the entire team.”

Lowdon describes the current mood in the camp as being the “normal mixture of excitement” along with the acknowledgement that “there's a lot of hard work ahead”, adding: “This is going to be a really, really, really intense season for the team, but it's just a massive opportunity for everyone involved.

“It doesn't happen very often that you get a chance to have a new team coming into Formula 1, so if people weren't excited about that, then you'd have to have serious questions asked! But equally, everyone's experienced and so there's a recognition that we're not just here for fun. We're here to deliver the most competitive new team that we possibly can, and we know it's not easy.”

‘It’s not our first rodeo’

A few months ago, Lowdon set out Cadillac’s initial target as being to “execute as well as we possibly can and gain respect from the other competitors”. With more of the pieces having since fallen into place, does that goal remain the same?

“Yeah, very much,” Lowdon answers. “We can't control what the other teams are doing or what they've done during the post season. It's been a very short post season as well. There's so many changes for 2026 that it's impossible to predict the hierarchy.

“What's clear is that the challenge that we've had as a new team is really very unique, because we're just doing everything for the first time, and that is an enormous challenge which shouldn't be underestimated, and I think people should recognise that when they're looking at what the expectation for a new team actually is.

“We're racing against teams where the youngest team on the grid has still a decade of Formula 1 racing experience or so, so I think that should set some expectation. But what we want to do is execute the things that we can control as well as we possibly can and measure ourselves against that.

“And if we do that, we know that over time, we will build what we all want, which is a very competitive Formula 1 team. But to coin the American phrase, it's not our first rodeo for anyone involved, and so we have a huge respect for the task ahead.

“It's super, super difficult, but we focus on what we can control and what we can do. Work as hard as we can and, the harder we work, hopefully the more competitive we become.”