Just over twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that passes minds are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Effort
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the program across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
