A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s latest entry for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
