A little more than a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the go-ahead as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Constructing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the US, with approximately 100 days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are aware there will not be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Wow, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we still have a great deal to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the chance to alter organizational mindset.”
With each day that elapses focus are sharper on the approaching moment of truth in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Push
In the summer they signed Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their vast knowledge in operating at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Bottas reflected the mood of fighting spirit.
“Of course, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to progress rapidly up to the pace and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and planned to hit the goal of 600 rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an main base at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are constructing the facility to manufacture the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Inspiration
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the mission across a variety of locations.
“In a system where you follow a process where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their team leader, that leader talks to a leader in another department, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Nick Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from management approval for everything is far more efficient and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
