Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and planned to hit the objective of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta