Approximately twelve months previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as Formula One’s latest participant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the championship to be hosted in the United States, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the embryonic operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and has a wry smile when thinking about the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yes, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are more focused on the impending moment of truth in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he thought the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that this is a professional operation doing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In the summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a tandem remarkable for their vast knowledge in competing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I believe given this organization, with this group, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in top gear, with employees now up to in excess of 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 quickly. Alongside their present headquarters at the UK base, the team are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the power unit, scheduled for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the direction in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project at a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable staff to handle things directly. Moving away from managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
