Just over one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One converges on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be staged in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent team in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the experience.
“You might get a short period reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “But then the very next instant you realize: ‘Well, there is still quite a lot to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the parent company, GM, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are sharper on the looming moment of truth in Australia and goals are being set realistically.
“One must presume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “In order that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement after that.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In late summer they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this team, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the phase of building an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are constructing the plant to produce the new engine, set for 2029 – until then they will use Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Apollo Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” said Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the program in a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that manager communicates with a supervisor somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix when the season begins and there is a considerable amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta
