Approximately one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest entry for the 2026 season. Establishing the squad from scratch has required a intense pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with around three months 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 task, they are conscious there will not be enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in early 2023 soon after it was formed, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.
“You might get a short period thinking back at what the team has achieved and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity
The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious seasons of 2005/2006 and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you don’t get the opportunity to alter cultural approach.”
With each passing day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching decisive point in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.
“One must presume that any incoming team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the team had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we want to show is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “In order that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. Once we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a duo remarkable for their priceless expertise in performing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a mountain of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I am confident with this structure, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in full swing, with personnel now up to more than 400 and intended to attain the goal of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of completing an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organisation, different from the trend in F1 for greater centralisation, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which the CTO alluded.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo program,” remarked Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have implemented, rather than the conventional chain of command, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of project teams all focusing on different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a protocol where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” explains Nick Chester. “Therefore we enable team members to really get on with it. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree riding on this for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their reserve driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
