Just over twelve months in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were ultimately granted the official approval as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from scratch has required a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race 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, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the journey.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester enjoyed success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical direction at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to finish last. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these people, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the target of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a complex organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
