Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track 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 task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented 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 want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. 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 taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
