A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest entry for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a hectic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we show up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the circuit. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem 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 reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor consults a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
