A little more than twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be hosted in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” said the team principal shortly before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, 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 assortment of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
