Just over a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a massive task 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. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
