A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into Formula One.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each passing day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal noted this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the race track. When we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this setup, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with staff now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all working on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
