Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
