Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately awarded the official approval as F1's most recent entrant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac understand the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and gets a amused expression when thinking about the experience.
“You can have a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to alter team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while the CTO echoed this he felt the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So we arrive and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the proper actions on the circuit. After we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of determined optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with these individuals, these personnel, it's entirely possible we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly to the front and achieve good results.”
To achieve that goal recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching in excess of 400 and scheduled to hit the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the plant to build the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a intricate structure, contrary to the direction in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“When you must follow a protocol where a challenge emerges and they report it to their manager, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Avoiding managerial sign-off for all decisions is far more efficient and more rapid.”
Upcoming Challenges
The effectiveness of this nimble strategy will be tested in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta
