A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
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 focusing on different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they report it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
