Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as F1's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are more focused on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work 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 am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the goal of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission across a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
