A little more than a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”
With each day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the race track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now at more than 400 and intended to reach the target of 600 members swiftly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the phase of completing an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the movement in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling distinct elements of the project at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
