Approximately a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
