A little more than one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne 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 aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Effort
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe with this setup, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
