A little more than twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
