A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of six hundred quickly. In addition to their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
