Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport converges on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Wow, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he says. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Well, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac brand, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in Australia and expectations are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he believed the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the correct procedures on the track. Once we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In August they signed Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a tandem notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with this group, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on distinct elements of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a manager in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile methodology will be proven in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
