Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As Formula One converges on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the season to be held in the US, with around three months to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental endeavor, they are conscious there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has truly matched the task of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you rarely get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being handled.
“One must presume that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted this year and while Chester shared this view he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the circuit. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In the summer they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Bottas echoed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To that end recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester referred.
NASA Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor consults a manager in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for each action is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is no little amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
