A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
