A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
