A little more than one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, planned for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on distinct elements of the program at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
