Just over one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Push
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this nimble methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
