A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has involved a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all working on distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
