Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the green light as the world of Formula One's most recent participant for 2026. Building the team from the ground up has required a hectic operating tempo that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport arrives on Las Vegas this race weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the season finale of the campaign to be held in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.
The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the embryonic team in March 2023 shortly after it was created, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center ever since and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“You can have a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “Then the following moment you realize: ‘Yeah, we still have quite a lot to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
The CTO had success at the Renault team in Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has been quite like the challenge of bringing the iconic American Cadillac marque, a factory team supported by the owner, General Motors, into F1.
“Building an grand prix team from nothing, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to change team culture.”
With every day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the approaching critical moment in the Australian GP and targets are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” the team principal noted earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we aim to demonstrate is that we belong on the grid,” he says. “So that we turn up and we operate well. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the race track. After we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we aim to demonstrate progression after that.”
Racing Talent and Recruitment Push
In late summer they contracted Checo Pérez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in operating at the leading positions in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect most likely a tough opening, because it is F1. But our goal isn't to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these people, it's entirely possible we won't be able to progress rapidly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”
To that end staff acquisition has been in full swing, with employees now reaching in excess of 400 and intended to attain the objective of 600 members quickly. Alongside their existing facility at Silverstone, the organization are in the phase of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the center to manufacture the 2029 engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, contrary to the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has inspired the fresh organizational mindset to which Nick Chester alluded.
Apollo Blueprint
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” said Lowdon just before the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have implemented, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach similar to that of Nasa’s, where there were a range of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program at a different facilities.
“If you have to go through a procedure where someone has a problem and they raise it up to their manager, that leader consults a leader somewhere else, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower people to really get on with it. Eliminating hierarchical consent for each action is much smoother and quicker.”
The Future
The success of this nimble approach will be tested in the pressure of racing in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their development driver the emerging American Colton Herta
