Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, 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 in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
