Just over one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the official approval as F1's latest entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling various components of the mission in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
