Approximately a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
