Just over a full year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted 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 made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in under three years,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an F1 team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling different aspects of the project across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Chester. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
