Just over a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the season to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the power unit, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated Lowdon just before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
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 range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they report it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
