Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the parent company, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with employees now reaching over 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
