A little more than twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally awarded the go-ahead as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the team from nothing has required a intense pace of work 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 season finale of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and enjoys a amused expression when considering the ride.
“There might be five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the next minute you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that passes focus are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Australia and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any new team coming in is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and we expect probably a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now up to over 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members rapidly. Alongside their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the 2029 engine, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all working on various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is much smoother and faster.”
The Future
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
