A little more than a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Constructing the squad from scratch has involved a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the campaign to be hosted in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are conscious there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed operation in early 2023 not long after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and gets a wry smile when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes reflecting at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Wow, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” he notes. “And then the following moment you consider: ‘Well, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of engineering strategy at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the task of introducing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a factory team backed by the corporate entity, GM, into F1.
“Building an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the impending moment of truth in Australia and targets are being set realistically.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” the team principal stated recently and while the CTO shared this view he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“Our primary goal we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So we arrive and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the track. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Push
In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair distinguished for their invaluable experience in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, the Red Bull team and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver reflected the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Of course, we have a realistic outlook,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to remain at the rear. In my view with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with employees now reaching more than 400 and intended to reach the objective of six hundred swiftly. Alongside their existing facility at the UK base, the team are in the phase of completing an HQ at the Fishers location in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the 2029 engine, set for 2029 – for now they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated structure, at odds with the movement in F1 for greater centralisation, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Chester alluded.
NASA Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked Graeme Lowdon shortly before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The deadlines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all focusing on different aspects of the mission at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that manager communicates with a leader in another department, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to take charge. Moving away from hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is no little amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
