Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and has a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why 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 personnel now at over 400 and planned to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on distinct elements of the project across 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 manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
