A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held 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 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this 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,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 quickly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that leader talks to a manager somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
