Just over twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac understand the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an grand prix team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. When we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a tandem remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe given this organization, with this team, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in top gear, with staff now reaching more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the program at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a manager at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this flexible approach will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
