The start-up culture Cadillac is embracing before F1 debut

As Formula 1's first brand-new entrant in a decade, Cadillac will be up against it when it turns up in Melbourne for its grand prix debut in March next year.

But while its on-track success will likely be a long-term project, F1's newest kid on the block won't feel like a small team in the slightest. Cadillac has embarked on an impressive recruiting spree from rival teams and throughout the industry, growing to a 400-strong workforce at the time of writing, with plans to further bolster its numbers in time for its 2026 debut.

Its staff is being deployed across a range of facilities, with a brand-new European outpost in Silverstone, established General Motors facilities in Charlotte, North Carolina, and an under construction US headquarters in Fishers, Indiana, which is expected to be completed by mid-2026.

But despite the rapidly growing numbers, team boss Graeme Lowdon is keen for Cadillac to maintain an agile start-up culture, hoping to avoid the pitfalls of other multi-location teams that have seen different departments get entrenched into silos.

"One of our core values as a team is that we operate as one team, so if we were to set up two very distinct locations, then there is always the risk that you end up with silos of information and lack of internal communication," Lowdon told Autosport.

"I looked in particular at things where we could learn from other people's things that work and didn't work, and certainly NASA's approach to the Apollo missions I found fascinating, because it was very, very tight deadlines, highly technical."

"We're a startup team at the end of the day and a characteristic of startup is that you're nimble and you can react quickly" -Graeme Lowdon

Photo by: Cadillac Communications

One key to making Cadillac's operations on both sides of the Atlantic work was ensuring there is a flat reporting structure, so the relevant engineers in Silverstone have the remit to communicate directly with their peers in Charlotte without having to go up a traditional chain of command.

"It's an area where peer-to-peer communication is really important," former Manor chief Lowdon pointed out. "So specialists in each area, whether it's engineers or comms specialists talking to each other, we needed a structure where you don't have to go up the tree in one organisation and then across the Atlantic and down the tree in another organisation, but a structure that allows peer-to-peer communication in every area.

"We're a start-up team at the end of the day and a characteristic of [a] start-up is that you're nimble and you can react quickly. And we wanted to keep that, because I think that's an important attribute for a Formula 1 team."

Values over ability

Buzzwords like 'nimble' and 'agile' sound good on a PowerPoint presentation, but in F1 those characteristics are the bare minimum requirement to be successful, with literally tens of thousands of moving parts involved in producing two F1 cars, shipping them around the world and running them against the established order.

That's what James Vowles found when he took charge of Williams, which was severely lagging behind its rivals with its byzantine car development processes, hindering efficiency and lead times. And while there is clearly no lack of resource behind the General Motors-backed Cadillac effort, F1's cost cap means that the days are gone when teams could spend their way out of trouble, prioritising a relentless pursuit of efficiency.

Cadillac's Silverstone plant will be the nerve centre of its F1 operation in 2026

Photo by: Cadillac Communications

Changing the company culture of 1000+ employee juggernauts the size of Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes or Ferrari can be a long and laborious process. But the other side of the spectrum also poses its own challenges. Cadillac has effectively built a team from scratch over the past 18 months, with no existing framework or culture to build upon.

Starting from a clean slate has its advantages, Lowdon feels, but it also means he has had to be extra diligent in the team's hiring process, as at one point Cadillac was hiring staff at a rate of one starter per day.

"When a team is established, you might have one or two people join, and then it's quite easy for them to pick up on the values that the team has," Lowdon added. "Whereas the other week, we had nearly 50 people joining in one week. It's a bigger challenge, but we spend a lot of time working on mission, vision and values. We communicate them very clearly to everybody.

"And we hire people based on values and not on ability, because you can teach ability, but it's difficult to teach values."

Cadillac 2026 race driver Sergio Perez throwing the first pitch at the LA Dodgers

Photo by: Luke Hales / Getty Images

The American way

Under the GM umbrella, the team's US owner TWG Motorsports is keen to build what Lowdon called an "authentically American team". That is apparent through its visual storytelling, with Lowdon and TWG Motorsports CEO Dan Towriss opening the New York Stock Exchange, or 2026 race driver Sergio Perez throwing the first pitch at an LA Dodgers baseball game - the Dodgers sharing their Mark Walters-led TWG Global parent company with the F1 team. It has also attracted US partners Tommy Hilfiger and Jim Beam.

By signing IndyCar ace Colton Herta as its test driver, the squad has also signalled its intention to promote homegrown talent to the cockpit when the time is right, even if Perez and fellow F1 race winner Valtteri Bottas are the team's starting drivers.

But until its flagship headquarters in Indiana comes online, where its manufacturing facility will be based, Cadillac's F1 nerve centre is its European outpost in Silverstone, largely populated by European staff and represented by two oversees drivers. Lowdon admitted that it's a difficult balancing exercise, but was adamant the team has a strong American identity from the outset.

"One of the challenges is, how do you build an authentically American team in just over 11 months? It's super, super difficult, and we constantly have these objectives that are pulling in different directions," Lowdon acknowledged.

"I'm not American, but I've got huge respect for the values that we're building, and I personally think that the team, it does have a strong American identity that's reflected in the commercial partners that we're attracting. They can see it as well.

"It feels like an American team, and it is an American team."