Approximately a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”
With every day that goes by focus are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this agile approach will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
