Approximately one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while Chester shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
