A little more than twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from nothing has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating 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.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
