Just over one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last granted the green light as F1's most recent participant for 2026. Establishing the organization from the ground up has required a frenetic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this race weekend, the team are aware time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be hosted in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in the spring of 2023 shortly after it was established, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core ever since and gets a amused expression when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO enjoyed success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's title-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the mission of introducing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the owner, GM, into Formula One.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” Chester remarks. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you rarely get the chance to change team culture.”
With every day that passes focus are sharper on the looming critical moment in Australia and goals are being managed.
“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 achievement in itself,” the team principal noted recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the proper actions on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that our credentials are solid, then we want to show forward movement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with personnel now reaching over 400 and scheduled to attain the objective of 600 rapidly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the midst of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the new engine, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will use Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organisation, at odds with the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
NASA Inspiration
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we understand how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all tackling distinct elements of the project across a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they escalate it to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a manager somewhere else, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes Chester. “We give authority to staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for all decisions is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have signed as their development driver the young American Colton Herta
