Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
