Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a amused expression when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming 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,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be proven 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 reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
