A little more than twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's newest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be held in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the track. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement after that.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the organization are in the process of building an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, planned for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, contrary to the movement in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Avoiding managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
