Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, different from the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
