A little more than twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to alter team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and intended to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that leader consults a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
