A little more than one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be held in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being managed.
“One must presume 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 feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains the CTO. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
