Just over twelve months ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the official approval as F1's latest participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from scratch has required a hectic work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport converges on Las Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center since then and has a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you consider: ‘Yeah, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
A Unique Challenge
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the mission of bringing the quintessentially American Cadillac name, a factory team sponsored by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter cultural approach.”
With every day that passes minds are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“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 noted recently and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Drive
In the summer they signed Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their vast knowledge in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a difficult start, because this is Formula One. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this structure, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now at over 400 and intended to attain the target of 600 members quickly. In addition to their current base at Silverstone, the team are in the process of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, scheduled for 2029 – in the meantime they will run power from Ferrari – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, different from the movement in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred.
Apollo Blueprint
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” said Graeme Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure comparable to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a protocol where an issue arises and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager talks to a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable staff to really get on with it. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is far more efficient and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this flexible approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
