Approximately twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent team in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the owner, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling various components of the program at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
