A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now at more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
