Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the green light as F1's latest participant for 2026. Constructing the organization from nothing has required a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Countdown to Australia
At the season finale of the championship to be held in the America, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic team in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you realize: ‘Well, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Drive
In late summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how difficult it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that manager consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to team members to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing when the season begins and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
