Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from nothing has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the US, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are building the plant to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
