Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
