Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal just before the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the program across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager talks to a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
