Cadillac's 12-month head start on Haas

Here's something that will annoy the "Haas is America's team" crowd: most Americans don't consider Haas an American team.

Not because of some technical argument about where the factory is located or who builds the gearbox. Because Haas has never done anything to make Americans feel like it's theirs.

LaLiga's director of international relations describes how fans attach to foreign teams: "Falling in love with a team is like a chemical reaction. You need to put the conditions in place and then wait for that lightning to strike." You can't manufacture love, but you can create conditions for it.

Haas put up a flag. They never created conditions.

Nine out of ten regular Americans have no idea what "Haas" even means unless they have exposure to machine shops and CNC equipment. Gene Haas is invisible to anyone outside manufacturing circles. The team does very little, if anything, stateside. The branding reads as European. The drivers have been European. The entire operation feels European.

The only people who consistently call Haas "America's team" are people who aren't from America. I regularly tell people there are no American teams in F1, and that's been functionally true since 2016 despite Haas technically existing.

They never carried the mantle. They never became America's team. And now a more recognisable American name is entering the sport, which means they've lost their opportunity entirely.

The NFL's UK general manager explains how fans actually fall in love with sports: "When people switch on, they want to understand what's at stake. 'How do you get a first down?' comes further down the road. First, you need to answer: 'Why should I care about this game?'"

Heart before head. Emotional hook before technical explanation.

Americans aren't going to get jingoistic about a non-American sport the way they do about the NFL or MLB. The default behaviour is rooting for winners and attaching to personalities. America's actual favourite F1 team is a title fought over by McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes — not the scrappy backmarker owned by a guy who makes machine tools.

Drive to Survive already showed us how American fans engage with F1: they flock to personalities above all else. Lando's underdog energy. Charles's heartbreak. Max's dominance. Danny Ric's charisma. The soap opera drama between teammates and team principals.

Guenther Steiner was Haas's only entry point into that personality economy. Netflix made him a character, fans quoted his outbursts, "focking door" became a meme. He was the reason casual American viewers could name the team at all.

Then Haas fired him, and their entire emotional hook disappeared. What's left is a team that finishes in the midfield, fields drivers most Americans couldn't pick out of a lineup, and carries branding that means nothing to the average person walking around Miami or Vegas.

Cadillac arrives with emotional hooks built in. The Andretti name is American racing royalty — Mario is the last American F1 champion, and Michael's decade-long fight to get a team on the grid became its own underdog story. "The family that wouldn't quit" writes itself in ways Haas never could because Gene Haas was never interested in being a character.

Nobody cared about Logan Sargeant. That's just true.

But the reason matters more than the outcome. Americans didn't rally behind Logan because he wasn't good, AND because he came up through the European ladder system. Most Americans outside of his hometown never heard of him until Williams gave him a seat, and by then, he was already struggling.

There was no story and an American journey. No personality that connected with fans, and he was just some guy who happened to have an American passport.

Compare that to Colton Herta or Kyle Larson — drivers who made their names in American motorsport culture. IndyCar. NASCAR. Series that Americans actually watch and follow. If either of them went to F1, it would be a completely different story because they'd arrive with existing American fanbases and narratives that American sports media already knows how to cover.

The driver question is central to whether Cadillac captures American fans. Not just "do they have an American driver," but "do they have an American driver that Americans already care about?" An American kid who came up through European karting won't move the needle. He'd need to be a Kimi Antonelli or young Max Verstappen to break through on talent alone. A Herta or Larson-level name would change everything because the emotional investment already exists.

This maps directly to building something worth caring about before asking people to care. Logan asked Americans to care about him without building anything first. Herta or Larson would arrive with years of American motorsport equity already banked.

The NFL, Premier League, and Bundesliga all understand that availability creates conditions for discovery. The Bundesliga just launched YouTube streaming in the UK alongside Sky and BBC. The NFL added free-to-air Channel 5 specifically to reach new viewers. You can't fall in love with something you never encounter.

Every American knows what Cadillac is.

That sounds obvious, but it's the entire ballgame. Haas needed ten seconds of explanation. Cadillac needs zero. When someone watching their first F1 race sees "Cadillac" on a car, they immediately understand that's the American team. There's no confusion, no "wait, who?" moment.

Where do you encounter Haas outside of race weekends? Their social media is functional but not distinctive. There's no American-specific content strategy, no presence at NASCAR events or auto shows, no retail footprint. If you're an American who doesn't already watch F1, you'll never accidentally discover Haas because they exist within F1 but not within American culture.

The infrastructure difference is staggering. GM has 4,000+ dealerships across America, which means 4,000 potential touchpoints for F1 content, merchandise, watch parties, and activations. Haas couldn't compete with that if they wanted to, because they're a racing team trying to build distribution, while Cadillac is a distribution network adding a racing team.

This is the difference between trying to grow an audience from scratch versus plugging into distribution that already exists. Haas spent nine years trying to build American awareness with almost no American distribution. Cadillac arrives with national distribution on day one.

Here's what I think happens at Miami and Vegas in 2026: when Cadillac shows up, American fans in attendance will feel something they never felt for Haas. A kind of default home team support. Not passionate fandom necessarily, but a baseline level of "that's our guys" energy.

Haas has raced at American GPs for nine years and never triggered that response. They show up, they race, they leave. Ferrari and McLaren dominate the hospitality and fan experience while Haas exists in the background.

The NFL's Global Markets Program figured out that frequency of touchpoints, more than just a single game, is what grows fandom and shows a connection with a fanbase. Haas had three American races per year for nine years — 27 opportunities to build American fan infrastructure. They built almost nothing.

Austin should be Haas's home race. They're the American team. The entire weekend should feel like a Haas activation. It doesn't. They're present but not dominant, and beyond Austin, there are no American touchpoints. No presence at the Indy 500. No NASCAR crossover. No activations at major American sporting events.

Cadillac will havea presence everywhere. NASCAR races through GM's existing relationships. The Indy 500 through the Andretti connection. Auto shows. Sporting events. Probably a Super Bowl ad. The question isn't whether Cadillac will out-activate Haas — it's whether Haas can build anything meaningful before Cadillac arrives.

The NFL discovered that it can "carbon date" when the league entered a market by looking at which teams are most popular there. In Mexico, where NFL broadcasts began in the 1970s, the Steelers and Cowboys still dominate because those teams were winning Super Bowls when Mexican fans first discovered American football. The fans who fell in love then stayed in love.

F1's American boom started around 2018 with Drive to Survive. The fans who discovered F1 in that window attached to Lando, Charles, Max, and Danny Ric. They attached to Guenther Steiner's soundbites — not to Haas itself. When Haas fired Guenther, they lost their only hook into that generation of fans.

Those fans are locked in now and they're not switching teams. The 2018 cohort is gone.

But the 2026 cohort is up for grabs. New regulations bring a reshuffled competitive order and a new American team arriving with maximum visibility. Fans who discover F1 in 2026 will encounter Cadillac at their moment of discovery, and if Cadillac is competitive — or even just interesting — those fans become Cadillac fans for life.

Some will argue that American F1 fans are too sophisticated to care about nationality, that DTS created fans who follow personalities, not flags. That's partly true for the existing fanbase. But the next wave of casual fans discovering F1 at American races will absolutely respond to a recognisable American brand in ways they never responded to Haas.

Whoever captures the 2026 cohort wins American F1 fandom for a generation. Haas missed 2018. They're about to miss 2026. There might not be a third window.

The NFL enters international markets knowing they're the challenger, and they don't try to replace local sports — they position alongside them. "We come into every market knowing we're a challenger brand. You can be a fan of multiple sports. I don't see it as binary."

Challenger positioning requires clarity about what you stand for and what you stand against.

Haas has never defined this. Are they the American underdog? The scrappy survivor? The bridge between American motorsport and F1? The stepping stone team for young drivers? They've all been these at different moments, and none of them stuck because none of them were built intentionally.

Cadillac has a choice to make. They can position themselves as "the American team that belongs here" and challenge the idea that American racing is separate from global motorsport. Or they can lean into "the team that almost didn't happen" and leverage the FOM rejection narrative to build underdog energy despite GM's resources.

The risk for Cadillac is arriving as a corporate exercise rather than a racing team. If fans sense Cadillac is a marketing vehicle first and race team second, the emotional connection breaks. But that's still a better problem than Haas's problem, which is having no clear positioning at all after nine years of existence.

There's a world where Cadillac does something Haas never attempted: bridge American motorsport audiences.

NASCAR's audience is ageing while F1's is young. IndyCar sits somewhere in between with genuine American racing credibility but a smaller reach. The team that figures out how to connect these audiences, rather than treating them as separate sports, wins access to the largest addressable market in American motorsport.

GM already has NASCAR relationships. The Andretti name has IndyCar equity. Cadillac could have a presence at the Indy 500, NASCAR events, and F1 races simultaneously, meeting American motorsport fans wherever they already are and giving them an on-ramp to F1.

Haas could have been this bridge. American team, accessible positioning, natural overlap with fans who already care about racing. They never built it. They operated like a European team that happened to have American ownership, which meant they captured neither the European fans who follow performance nor the American fans who might have followed identity.

Being from a country doesn't make fans from that country care about you. You have to create conditions for them to fall in love, and nationality is a starting point rather than a strategy.

Haas had nine years to build something worth caring about. They never did. They skipped straight to existing without earning attention first, and you can't monetise what you haven't built.

Cadillac will have twelve months before their first race, and they'll probably capture more American fan energy in that window than Haas has built in a decade. Not because Cadillac is American. Because Cadillac understands that being American isn't enough — you have to build the product, grow the audience, and distribute it where fans actually are before you can monetise the attention.

The race for "America's F1 team" started years ago. Haas just didn't realise they were competing.

What conditions are you creating for fans to discover and attach to your property, or are you assuming they'll care because you exist?