Approximately one year previously at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as F1's latest entry for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has required a intense pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Vegas this weekend, the team know the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its core since then and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he says. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac brand, a factory team sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Establishing an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Melbourne and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Push
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to get relatively quickly to the front and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now up to over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said the team principal just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are incredibly tight. Alright, 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 decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that leader consults a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be tested in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
