Just over a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last given the green light as F1's newest participant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has required a intense pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are conscious there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a amused expression when reflecting on the journey.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Challenge
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in charge of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the iconic American Cadillac name, a factory team supported by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Establishing an F1 team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you rarely get the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal commented recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the team had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their pilots for 2026, a duo distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now at in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the goal of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to produce the new engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the mission at 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 supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The efficacy of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
