Approximately twelve months ago at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were at last awarded the green light as Formula One’s newest entrant for the 2026 season. Building the team from the ground up has entailed a hectic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on the Vegas strip this race weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.
The Countdown to Australia
At the last event of the campaign to be held in the America, with just over three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are conscious there will never be adequate time.
The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed team in March 2023 not long after it was formed, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.
“There might be a short period looking back at what you have accomplished and think: ‘Amazing, what an achievement what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Yes, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Opportunity
Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's victorious years of 2005 and 2006 and was in control of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has truly matched the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry backed by the corporate entity, General Motors, into Formula One.
“Building an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the chance to change organizational mindset.”
With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the looming critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being managed.
“You have to assume that a brand-new squad coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal stated this year and while Chester shared this view he believed the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that this is a professional operation performing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate improvement from there on.”
Racing Talent and Team Building Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver echoed the sentiment of combative optimism.
“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it is F1. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view given this organization, with this team, these people, there’s no reason why we can't manage to progress rapidly to a competitive level and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in full swing, with staff now at over 400 and planned to hit the target of six hundred rapidly. Alongside their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in North Carolina, where they are building the plant to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated structure, contrary to the movement in the sport for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Chester referred.
Space Mission Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo project,” said the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”
So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the mission across a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a process where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their supervisor, that supervisor consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable people to take charge. Eliminating managerial sign-off for everything is so much cleaner and quicker.”
Upcoming Challenges
The efficacy of this agile strategy will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for F1, too. Cadillac have recruited as their reserve driver the young Californian Colton Herta
