Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has involved a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic operation in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you don’t get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Driver Lineup and Team Building Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the project across a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
