A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last given the go-ahead as F1's latest entrant for the 2026 season. Constructing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo program. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.
The Tight Timeline to Australia
At the season finale of the season to be staged in the America, with around three months to go before they make their debut for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 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 enough hours in the day.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the squad were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the journey.
“You can have a short period thinking back at what you’ve done and say: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what we have built in less than three years,’” he says. “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 championship-winning years of 2005 and 2006 and was in command of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac name, a factory team backed by the parent company, General Motors, into F1.
“Creating an Formula One team from scratch, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you rarely get the possibility to change cultural approach.”
With every day that elapses minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Melbourne and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but simply getting on to the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon commented this year and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the squad had a statement to make as well.
“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender performing the right things on the circuit. Once we prove that we’re really credible, then we will focus on forward movement subsequently.”
Pilot Selection and Team Building Effort
In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a pair distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of determined optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and we expect most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we’re not there to stay at the back. I am confident with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and taste victory.”
To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with staff now at more than 400 and scheduled to hit the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the process of building an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, where they are developing the facility to produce the power unit, set for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex structure, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” stated Graeme Lowdon just before the British GP in the summer. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The schedules, are incredibly tight. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of specialist groups all tackling various components of the mission across a multiple sites.
“In a system where you follow a protocol where an issue arises and they raise it up to their supervisor, that leader communicates with a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says Nick Chester. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and more rapid.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this nimble methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a significant degree at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta
