A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, this staff, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
