Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
