Approximately a full year ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately granted the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Establishing the team from scratch has entailed a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team know time is getting tight.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the final race of the campaign to be held in the America, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental challenge, they are cognizant there will not be sufficient time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the embryonic project in the spring of 2023 soon after it was created, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the journey.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the next minute you think: ‘Yeah, there is still a significant amount to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in control of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no previous experience has quite compared with the task of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Establishing an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team joining the grid is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented earlier this year and while Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we turn up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the correct procedures on the race track. Once we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate improvement after that.”
Pilot Selection and Hiring Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for the 2026 season, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the sharp end in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Certainly, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. In my view with this setup, with this group, these personnel, there’s no reason why we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now at over 400 and intended to reach the goal of 600 members rapidly. Complementing their current base at the UK base, the squad are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in the Indianapolis area and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the center to produce the power unit, set for 2029 – until then they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in the sport for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British GP in the summer. “We’re realistic, we recognize how challenging it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. Well, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have implemented, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach comparable to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a protocol where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that supervisor consults a supervisor at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
What Lies Ahead
The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree on the line for Formula One, too. Cadillac have taken on as their reserve driver the young American Colton Herta
