Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are sharper on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now up to more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
