Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's newest entrant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has entailed a hectic work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Vegas this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious years of 2005/2006 and was in control of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are sharper on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas expressed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to hit the objective of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
NASA Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble methodology will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
