Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with around a hundred 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 conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“There might be five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
