Photo: Liauzh, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
A fresh report says TWG Global is weighing a sale of Cadillac’s Formula 1 team, with a price of about $3 billion and seven interested parties. I can’t confirm any of that, and TWG hasn’t commented. What I can confirm is that TWG said in August it wasn’t considering a sale. The distance between that statement and this report is now a problem for the team, whether or not anything is actually for sale.
That’s the argument here: for a team in its first season, an unanswered ownership question isn’t background noise. It’s an operating cost, and Cadillac is paying it while it tries to prove it belongs on the grid.
What’s confirmed, and what isn’t
The August position from TWG is on the record. The team’s own newsroom, meanwhile, says nothing about ownership: its latest posts are race reports and Sergio Pérez’s contract extension. The $3 billion figure and the seven suitors are unconfirmed. So is the report that owner Mark Walter is under federal investigation. I haven’t seen a court filing, agency release or company statement that confirms it, so I’m treating it as reported, not established, and nothing below assumes wrongdoing.
A $3 billion price tag is paying for the slot, not the results
Through the São Paulo Grand Prix, round 20, Cadillac still hasn’t scored. At the half-term mark it was the only team without a point. Pérez was classified 10th at Monaco on the road before a post-race penalty dropped him to 15th. Both cars retired in Austria and again in Hungary, where Valtteri Bottas’s brakes overheated. In Mexico City, Pérez finished 17th and Bottas retired on lap 46. In São Paulo, a cross-threaded wheel nut kept Bottas from starting, and Pérez finished 18th.
It isn’t all wreckage. Both cars finished at Monza and Singapore, and the team has said so with some relief. But nobody pays $3 billion for 17th-place Sundays. They pay because there are only 11 places on the grid and you can’t build another one. If the number is real, it’s a price for scarcity and for what the team might become. My colleague’s piece on the 2029 engine program makes the long-range version of that case well.
What limbo costs a team that is still building
Here’s the part a price-tag headline misses. Cadillac has already changed team principals this season: Graeme Lowdon was speaking for the team after Hungary in July, and Marcin Budkowski was in the role by the Spanish Grand Prix in September. Add an ownership rumor and the team is asking engineers, suppliers and partners to commit to a project whose leadership and ownership both look provisional.
That’s my read, not a confirmed fact, but it follows from how racing teams work. Sponsors sign with a team and they also underwrite its owner. Engineers weigh offers against stability. And the team has gone out of its way to project continuity: it extended Pérez to at least 2029 on October 28. Whoever buys in inherits that commitment, and inherits a car whose reliability was one of the biggest stories of the first half of the season, as Mexico City’s quieter failures showed.
The statement TWG should write next
An August denial answers an August question. A useful update would separate three things that the current noise has blurred together: a sale of the whole team, a minority investment, and any matter involving the owner personally. Minority stakes are routine across the grid and nobody calls them sales. “Not considering a sale” can be accurate while an investor process runs, and I can’t tell from the outside which one the August wording was meant to cover.
That’s why silence is the riskiest option. If the report is wrong, a one-line correction costs nothing. If it’s partly right, the team is better off naming what is and isn’t on the table before partners and staff fill in the blanks themselves. Watch for whether TWG, General Motors or the team addresses it directly before the season ends. The next statement matters more than the last one.
Lead image: Valtteri Bottas in the Cadillac Formula 1 car at the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix. Photo: Liauzh, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
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