A little more than a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project 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 supervisor talks to a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
