Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
