Just over a full year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
