Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport 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 Nick Chester echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
