By: Chris Perkins, Senior Writer and Editor, GM News
Indianapolis 500, Formula 1®, NASCAR: GM is the only automaker racing in all three this Sunday
2026-05-21
By: Chris Perkins, Senior Writer and Editor, GM News
Forget grilling: motorsports fans know the weekend before Memorial Day is all about racing, with INDYCAR’s 110th running of the Indianapolis 500, Formula 1® Lenovo Canadian Grand Prix, and NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 all running in succession on the same day.
This year, General Motors will be the only automaker competing in all three major racing events. At the Indianapolis 500, Chevrolet engines will power over half the field of 33 cars. The Cadillac Formula 1® Team will compete at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montréal in the Canadian Grand Prix for the first time. And at the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte, numerous NASCAR Cup Series drivers will try to drive their Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 race cars to victory.
“The scale and the breadth of our footprint will really be on display this weekend,” says Eric Warren, Vice President of Global Motorsport Competition at GM. “It demonstrates our deep racing heritage. This isn’t just a side activity: we’re competing to win at the top levels of motorsports all at the same time. I really believe that’s what makes GM unique.”
IMAGE CAPTION: Trackhouse Racing No. 1 driver Ross Chastain celebrates with his team and Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 after winning the 2025 Coca-Cola 600.
This isn’t the first time GM has competed in multiple top-level racing events on the same weekend. Chevrolet has fielded simultaneous entries in the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 every year since 2012.
“There are plenty of weekends where we’re racing in five or six key events all over the world,” Warren says. “Part of how we’ve structured GM Motorsports is to manage the complexity of that. There are dedicated groups that are on-site supporting the teams directly, and groups back at the Charlotte Technical Center, Indianapolis, and Silverstone for F1®, that support with remote data analysis. It’s like space launch mission control.”
Part of Warren’s job is to identify opportunities big and small to improve GM’s chance of winning in any competition. “Inevitably in racing, only one team wins,” he says. “When it's not your team, you have to use it as a learning opportunity to find failure points and bring that back to the larger group.”
It’s also Warren’s job to evaluate the strengths of each member of the organization and assign each team member a role that can benefit the whole. “Just because a person might not be able to sit in a pit box and make strategy calls in the moment, doesn’t mean they’re not instrumental, looking at time-series data and picking out patterns, for example,” Warren says.
IMAGE CAPTION: Chevrolet personnel with David Malukas (L) and Alexander Rossi (R) at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Throughout Memorial Day weekend, GM Motorsports engineers will be spread all over North America performing support roles for all three major races. Warren himself will visit the Canadian Grand Prix on Friday and Saturday, then fly to Indianapolis for the 500 on Sunday, and then zip back to Charlotte that same afternoon, hopefully in time to catch the end of the Coca-Cola 600.
“People always say to me, ‘it seems exciting, you must really enjoy it,’” Warren says. “My response is: It’s not boring.” GM doesn’t race in these top-tier series for mere entertainment. There’s a purpose to GM’s long history of motorsport competition, and each top-tier series poses its own sets of challenges, Warren says.
IMAGE CAPTION: Eric Warren at the Japanese Grand Prix
“I believe wholeheartedly that this is the best environment right now for an engineer to learn,” he says. “A lot of technology and knowledge are transferred from the racing world back to GM production cars. What motorsports offers is a tremendous amount of data that you get to evaluate in really short time cycles. It’s a test every weekend.”
Within GM, racing and production-car engineers work together on things like aerodynamics, tire development, simulation, and correlation (comparing simulation data against real-world performance). Racing also gives GM opportunities to further develop its prowess with cloud computing and AI methods to solve engineering problems, Warren adds.
In addition to NASCAR, INDYCAR, and F1®, GM has a presence in sports-car, off-road, and drag-racing series around the world. The vehicles, the racing venues, and the rules are all wildly different, and those diverse challenges all feed into a bigger dataset that helps GM engineers learn.
IMAGE CAPTION: Valtteri Bottas in the Cadillac MAC-26 during the recent Japanese Grand Prix weekend.
“The exciting part about this weekend for me, and for GM as a whole, is the fact that we’re demonstrating our scale, capability, and commitment,” Warren says of the upcoming weekend. “We’re doing that every day as we’re creating new consumer products, and we feel strongly that as our fans see that we’re able to be competitive in all these race series, they should have confidence that their vehicles have not just capability, but quality as well.”
So, tune in Sunday to watch GM compete and learn on the world stage. One thing is certain: it won’t be boring.
Forget grilling: motorsports fans know the weekend before Memorial Day is all about racing, with INDYCAR’s 110th running of the Indianapolis 500, Formula 1® Lenovo Canadian Grand Prix, and NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 all running in succession on the same day.
This year, General Motors will be the only automaker competing in all three major racing events. At the Indianapolis 500, Chevrolet engines will power over half the field of 33 cars. The Cadillac Formula 1® Team will compete at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montréal in the Canadian Grand Prix for the first time. At the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte, numerous NASCAR Cup Series drivers will be aiming their Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 race cars to victory lane.
“The scale and the breadth of our footprint will really be on display this weekend,” says Eric Warren, Vice President of Global Motorsport Competition at GM. “It demonstrates our deep racing heritage. This isn’t just a side activity: we’re competing to win at the top levels of motorsports all at the same time. I really believe that’s what makes GM unique.”
This isn’t the first time GM has competed in multiple top-level racing events on the same weekend. Chevrolet has fielded simultaneous entries in the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 every year since 2012.
“There are plenty of weekends where we’re racing in five or six key events all over the world,” Warren says. “Part of how we’ve structured GM Motorsports is to manage the complexity of that. There are dedicated groups that are on-site supporting the teams directly, and groups back at the Charlotte Technical Center, Indianapolis, and Silverstone for F1®, that support with remote data analysis. It’s like space launch mission control.”
Part of Warren’s job is to identify opportunities big and small to improve GM’s chance of winning in any competition. “Inevitably in racing, only one team wins,” he says. “When it's not your team, you have to use it as a learning opportunity to find failure points and bring that back to the larger group.”
It’s also Warren’s job to evaluate the strengths of each member of the organization and assign each team member a role that can benefit the whole. “Just because a person might not be able to sit in a pit box and make strategy calls in the moment, doesn’t mean they’re not instrumental, looking at time-series data and picking out patterns, for example,” Warren says.
Throughout Memorial Day weekend, GM Motorsports engineers will be spread all over North America performing key roles for all three major races. Warren himself will visit the Canadian Grand Prix on Friday and Saturday, then fly to Indianapolis for the 500 on Sunday, and then zip back to Charlotte that same afternoon, hopefully in time to catch the end of the Coca-Cola 600.
“People always say to me, ‘it seems exciting, you must really enjoy it,’” Warren says. “My response is: It’s not boring.” GM doesn’t race in these top-tier series for mere entertainment. There’s a purpose to GM’s long history of motorsport competition, and each top-tier series poses its own sets of challenges, Warren says.
“I believe wholeheartedly that this is the best environment right now for an engineer to learn,” he says. “A lot of technology and knowledge are transferred from the racing world back to GM production cars. What motorsports offers is a tremendous amount of data that you get to evaluate in really short time cycles. It’s a test every weekend.”
Within GM, racing and production-car engineers work together on things like aerodynamics, tire development, simulation, and correlation (comparing simulation data against real-world performance). Racing also gives GM opportunities to further develop its prowess with cloud computing and AI methods to solve engineering problems, Warren adds.
In addition to NASCAR, INDYCAR, and F1®, GM has a presence in sports-car, off-road, and drag-racing series around the world. The vehicles, the racing venues, and the rules are all wildly different, and those diverse challenges all feed into a bigger dataset that helps GM engineers learn.
“The exciting part about this weekend for me, and for GM as a whole, is the fact that we’re demonstrating our scale, capability, and commitment,” Warren says. “We’re doing that every day as we’re creating new vehicles, and we feel strongly that as our fans see that we’re able to be competitive in all these race series, they should have confidence that their vehicles have not just capability, but quality as well.”
So, tune in Sunday to watch GM compete and learn on the world stage. One thing is certain: it won’t be boring.