Approximately one year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a frenetic operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the America, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Chester had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the mission of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors Corporation, into F1.
“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to transform team culture.”
With every day that goes by minds are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he thought the team had a statement to make as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the right things on the track. After we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on progression after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Push
In late summer they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the mood of determined optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and planned to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the organization are in the midst of finishing an main base at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are incredibly tight. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program across a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
