Just over a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as the world of Formula One's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core from that point and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in under three years,’” he says. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are more focused on the impending critical moment in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organisation, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Avoiding management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
