A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has required a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of six hundred quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
