A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has required a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with just over 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Well, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they contracted Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of six hundred rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” stated the team principal shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the program in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
