Just over a full year ago at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the green light as Formula One’s latest entrant for 2026. Constructing the organization from the ground up has involved a intense work rate that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo program. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, the team know the deadline is approaching.
The Race Against Time to Australia
At the last event of the championship to be hosted in the US, with approximately a hundred days to go before they make their debut for the first time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a sisyphean challenge, they are cognizant there will not be adequate time.
The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in March 2023 soon after it was established, when the organization were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its core ever since and gets a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.
“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you have accomplished and go: ‘Amazing, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in less than three years,’” he notes. “And then the next minute you think: ‘Well, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”
An Unprecedented Task
Nick Chester had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005/2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of introducing the all-American Cadillac name, a manufacturer-backed entry sponsored by the corporate entity, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an F1 team from scratch, when are you ever going to get a chance to do that?” he observes. “There's nothing comparable. In an existing team you won't have the opportunity to change cultural approach.”
With each day that goes by thoughts are increasingly concentrated on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being managed.
“It's reasonable to expect that any incoming team coming in is going to be last but merely participating will be an achievement in itself,” Lowdon noted earlier this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.
“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we turn up and we function efficiently. We want to show that this is a professional operation executing the proper actions on the track. After we prove that our credentials are solid, then we will focus on improvement subsequently.”
Racing Talent and Hiring Effort
In late summer they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a duo notable for their vast knowledge in performing at the front in two championship-winning squads, the Red Bull team and Mercedes-AMG, and Bottas reflected the attitude of fighting spirit.
“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he said. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be probably a tough opening, because this is Formula One. But our goal isn't to stay at the back. I am confident given this organization, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to progress rapidly to the front and taste victory.”
To that end hiring has been in top gear, with personnel now reaching over 400 and planned to reach the goal of 600 members quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the phase of finishing an main base at Fishers in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to build the new engine, planned for 2029 – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a sophisticated organization, at odds with the direction in the sport for more centralization, and has led to the fresh organizational mindset to which Chester referred to.
Space Mission Model
“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the British GP in July. “We are pragmatic, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”
So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of NASA's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all tackling different aspects of the program in a multiple sites.
“If you have to go through a procedure where an issue arises and they raise it up to their team leader, that supervisor communicates with a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it becomes inefficient,” notes the CTO. “Therefore we enable team members to take charge. Moving away from management approval for each action is far more efficient and faster.”
The Future
The success of this nimble strategy will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix in 2026 and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have signed as their test driver the emerging American Colton Herta
