Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the US, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new 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 recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
