A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
