Just over twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit 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 conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he believed the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
