Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect 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 accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
