Just over a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a knowing grin when thinking about the experience.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
