Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 soon 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 journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process 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 manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
