A little more than one year ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the organization from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with around a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent team in early 2023 shortly after it was created, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its core ever since and enjoys a wry smile when reflecting on the experience.
“You can have a brief moment thinking back at what you have accomplished and say: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the next minute you think: ‘Well, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Nick Chester achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the challenge of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, GM, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an grand prix team from nothing, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter organizational mindset.”
With each passing day that passes thoughts are more focused on the impending decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad joining the grid is probably going to finish last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the organization had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we arrive and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the circuit. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show progression subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In the summer they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their drivers for 2026, a pair notable for their vast knowledge in competing at the sharp end in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas echoed the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, there is every reason that we won't be able to advance swiftly to a competitive level and enjoy some success.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with staff now at over 400 and planned to hit the target of 600 members swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of building an HQ at the Fishers location in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for the 2029 season – for now they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a intricate organization, different from the direction in the sport for increased consolidation, and has led to the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.
Space Mission Blueprint
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon ahead of the British GP in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, instead of the traditional management structure, a flat management structure similar to that of NASA's, where there were a variety of project teams all working on various components of the project in a variety of locations.
“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they report it to their team leader, that manager consults a leader somewhere else, it travels back down, it becomes inefficient,” says the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Avoiding hierarchical consent for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”
The Future
The effectiveness of this flexible methodology will be evaluated in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young Californian Colton Herta
