Just over one year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the official approval as the world of Formula One's newest participant for 2026. Establishing the team from the ground up has required a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the NASA lunar mission. As Formula One converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the season finale of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending task, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an official entry. He has been at its center since then and has a knowing grin when considering the ride.
“You might get five minutes thinking back at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in under three years,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you think: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
A Unique Opportunity
The CTO achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “There's nothing comparable. In an well-set team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With every day that elapses focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in Melbourne and targets are being handled.
“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the team had a point to prove as well.
“The initial objective we want to show is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the proper actions on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show progression from there on.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Drive
In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for the 2026 season, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the sharp end in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas echoed the attitude of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to finish last. In my view given this organization, with these individuals, this staff, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To realize that ambition hiring has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and scheduled to reach the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their existing facility at the UK base, the squad are in the midst of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to manufacture the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne. It is a complex organization, at odds with the direction in F1 for increased consolidation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Apollo Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the Silverstone race in July. “We’re realistic, we recognize how difficult it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have adopted, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all tackling various components of the project at a multiple sites.
“When you must follow a process where an issue arises and they escalate it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader somewhere else, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
Upcoming Challenges
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition in 2026 and there is no little amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their development driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
