Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility 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 the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
