Approximately twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the green light as F1's most recent entry for 2026. Constructing the team from nothing has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be staged in the America, with around 100 days to go before they make their debut for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in early 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With each passing day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the right things on the race track. Once we prove that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to in excess of 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Complementing their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on distinct elements of the mission across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
