Just over a full year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the mission in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
