Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, 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 mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
