Approximately twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes minds are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to reach the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – for now they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower team members to really get on with it. Avoiding management approval for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
