Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the official approval as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be staged in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change team culture.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the program across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
