A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
