Approximately twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the official approval as F1's newest participant for the 2026 season. Building the team from nothing has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with around 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, 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 confirmed place. He has been at its center since then and enjoys a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he says. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-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 nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses minds are sharper on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “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 given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in overdrive, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the process of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate structure, at odds with the direction in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” stated Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British GP in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the mission at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager at a different location, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible methodology will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
