Approximately one year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's latest participant for 2026. Building the squad from nothing has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac are aware the clock is ticking.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be held in the United States, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of technical development at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an established team you won't have the opportunity to transform organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the impending decisive point in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while the CTO echoed this he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we are a serious contender doing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it will likely be almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in top gear, with employees now up to more than 400 and planned to attain the objective of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the organization are in the phase of finishing an headquarters at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, at odds with the trend in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how challenging it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all focusing on various components of the mission at a variety of locations.
“When you must follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader in another department, it travels back down, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be evaluated in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for F1, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
