A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's latest entry for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, 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 in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
