Just over twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that manager talks to a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
