Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
