Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we operate well. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
