A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
