A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has involved a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds 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, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and has a amused expression when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
