Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be hosted in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be 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 am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that leader consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
