Approximately one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time 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 never-ending challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has been quite like the mission of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by minds are sharper on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an main base at Fishers in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are constructing the center to produce the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager talks to a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to really get on with it. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
