A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the ride.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing 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 existing team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with these individuals, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 quickly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta