Approximately twelve months previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed 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 recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that passes thoughts are sharper on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
