A little more than twelve months in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as F1's newest entry for 2026. Establishing the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this race weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic project in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Challenge
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in Australia and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Effort
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the attitude of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it’s going to be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there’s no reason why we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now at over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the process of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to produce the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, different from the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
