A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally granted the go-ahead as F1's most recent participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has involved a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As Formula One descends on Las Vegas this race weekend, Cadillac understand time is getting tight.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with around three months to go before they take to the track for the inaugural 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 adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed team in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an official entry. He has been at its core from that point and enjoys a wry smile when thinking about the experience.
“There might be a brief moment looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” Chester states. “Then the next minute you consider: ‘Well, we’ve still got a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester had success at the Renault team in Fernando Alonso’s title-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the task of bringing the iconic American Cadillac brand, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into Formula One.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you won't have the possibility to transform team culture.”
With each day that goes by focus are more focused on the looming decisive point in Australia and goals are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any new team entering the sport is probably going to finish last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon commented recently and while Nick Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the organization had a point to prove as well.
“Our primary goal we want to show is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that this is a professional operation doing the proper actions on the track. Once we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression from there on.”
Driver Lineup and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a massive task to do, and it will likely be 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 given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we shouldn’t be able to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in top gear, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members swiftly. Alongside their present headquarters at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of building an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are developing the facility to produce the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organization, contrary to the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred to.
NASA Model
“We've drawn heavily from the Apollo project,” remarked Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in the summer. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The deadlines, they’re super, super, super short. Alright, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a flat management structure akin to that of NASA's, where there were a range of project teams all working on different aspects of the project across a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their team leader, that supervisor talks to a supervisor somewhere else, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Eliminating management approval for everything is much smoother and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile methodology will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is no little amount at stake for the sport, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
