A little more than a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the official approval as the world of Formula One's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change team culture.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are sharper on the impending moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – until then they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the direction in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
