Just over twelve months in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be staged in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “And then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has been quite like the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the race track. When we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with staff now reaching over 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of finishing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is much smoother and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the young Californian Colton Herta
