A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
