A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit 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 monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
