A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the green light as the world of Formula One's newest entry for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Drive
In the summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at over 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are constructing the facility to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Apollo Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal shortly before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
