Approximately twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the official approval as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Building the organization from the ground up has required a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. When we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I believe given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the organization are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all working on distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
