Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last awarded the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has involved a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the final race of the championship to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean endeavor, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in early 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart ever since and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the opportunity to alter team culture.”
With each day that goes by minds are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a statement to make as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a pair 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 reflected the attitude of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I believe with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now up to more than 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the midst of finishing an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the center to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“We've drawn heavily from the NASA moon mission,” said Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader communicates with a manager in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to staff to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
