A little more than one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
