Just over twelve months previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has involved a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have five minutes thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Australia and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in operating at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a mountain of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, where they are constructing the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that manager consults a manager at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
