A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the process of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
