Just over one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester shared this view he believed the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, 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 comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
