Approximately twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has required a intense operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with approximately three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the 2029 engine, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. 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 akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
