Approximately one year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 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 rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
