Approximately a full year previously at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the go-ahead as the world of Formula One's newest participant for the 2026 season. Constructing the team from scratch has involved a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the season to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the first time 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 aware there will not be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart since then and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Task
Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to transform organizational mindset.”
With each day that goes by focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we should be there,” he says. “So we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Driver Lineup and Recruitment Drive
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair remarkable for their invaluable experience in competing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this structure, with this team, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to hit the goal of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” stated the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We are pragmatic, we know how challenging it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a decentralized management akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on various components of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a supervisor in another department, it travels back down, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to people to handle things directly. Avoiding management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this flexible strategy will be tested in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
