A little more than one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from nothing has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“You might get a brief moment thinking back at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With each passing day that passes focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and expectations are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “In order that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, this staff, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end recruitment has been in top gear, with personnel now at more than 400 and intended to attain the objective of six hundred swiftly. In addition to their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “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 implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their supervisor, that leader talks to a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
