A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the season to be staged in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that 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 reaching over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
