Just over one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
