A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team 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 noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
