Approximately a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest participant for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One descends on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Countdown to Australia
At the final race of the season to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 not long after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when considering the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you won't have the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Melbourne and targets are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender doing the right things on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We face a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a challenging beginning, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. 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 a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now at more than 400 and scheduled to attain the target of 600 swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the NASA moon mission,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a range of project teams all focusing on various components of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
