Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the official approval as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with approximately 100 days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, 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 don’t get the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the race track. When we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we won't be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and intended to reach the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organization, different from the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on various components of the program in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile approach will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old Californian Colton Herta
